Stereolab: Mars Audiac Quintet (2LP) [DUOPHONIC]

Why you'll love it

This remastered 2LP set, pressed in the EU, spreads the album across four sides. Mars Audiac Quintet reached No. 16 in the UK, and Pitchfork later ranked it among the 100 best albums of the 1990s.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Remastered
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Stereolab's secret weapon has always been that the drone and the tune get equal billing. On their third album the London-and-Paris crew leaned hard into the tune side, wrapping Tim Gane's motorik guitars and vintage organs around Laetitia Sadier's cool, unhurried melodies in French and English, and the result is some of the most cheerful-sounding music ever made about political economy.

Keyboardist Katharine Gifford joined for these sessions in the spring of 1994, while Sean O'Hagan stepped back to focus on the High Llamas and kept turning up as a guest. "Ping Pong" bounces along like a lounge record with opinions, "Wow and Flutter" chimes, "Transona Five" settles into a long, hypnotic glide, and "International Colouring Contest" opens with a sample of the wonderfully eccentric Lucia Pamela as a tribute. "Three-Dee Melodie" opens the record with a wink and a hum.

The Rough Guide to Rock said it lifted the band into the higher stratum of indie pop. An American indie band even took its name from one of the songs, which is the kind of fan mail you can't buy.

Also at Kops: more Stereolab on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Duophonic / Warp (cat# D-UHF-D05RT), a reissue of the 1994 album.