As the legend goes, Stereolab bettlerharfemensch Tim Gane met the devil himself one dark night in the curved corners of Rem Koolhaas' Educatorium at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. On this night, the devil did not materialize in his traditional red spandex bodysuit, nor did he hold a pitchfork. Instead, he came fat, balding, and wearing nothing but a white stuffed bunny over his groin area. Ol' Scratch made a proposition: in exchange for Gane's soul, he would teach him to play the slide guitar like no man before him. For an extra toe, the Dark Prince even threw in a vintage theremin. It was there, in the gut of the building's cement swooshes and glass walls, that he and the devil struck a pact. For the cost of eternal damnation, Tim Gane became the greatest Delta Kraut player in history.

In seedy Dutch mussel joints, "Nine Toes Tim" played, drank, fought, and eventually lost his life to a poisoned trappist ale left by a scorned lover. But not before cutting his legacy into the scratchy vinyl of records he recorded for a nickel a piece at Stereolab Studios-- nickels he drunkenly swore to put towards "booze, minimalist furniture, and womens." At the time, "race" records, as they were unenlightenedly referred to, became a hot commodity in European cities, and no race records were more popular than those German ones from the northern flatlands.

Now, decades later, after his original audiences have passed away (save for those few freaks of health), it is impossible to accurately judge Tim Gane's contemporary importance. For a man so intoxicated by his own debauchery, Gane recorded an ungodly massive amount of music. He surrounded himself with regular Stereolab session players such as Mary "Big Baba" Hansen and Laetitia "Blind Marxist" Sadier, who filled out the sounds with organs, chimes, vocals, vibes, beats, keys, and sundry other tweeting French instruments. Oddly enough, despite his deal with Satan, Gane put his slide guitar to tape only once, on this record you hold now in your hands, Sound-Dust. Restored from its original "compact disc" release, Sound-Dust, though it likely came late in Stereolab's existence, towers, however slightly, over a majority of Gane's oeuvre like the cartoon rampart on its cover. Out of context and sequence, Sound-Dust remains a lasting testament to the spirit of the Delta Kraut.

Historians have linked Gane's music to the shadowy music of Delta Kraut originators Neu, a wandering duo who regularly played their hypnotic grooves up and down the Rhine for steamboating vacationers. And in fact, Gane's critical contemporaries often dismissed his output as mere Neu mimicry. "Jah, vhatevs, zey are just neu Neu," they would say, laughing at their own tepid humor. But rocking in his Ikea tuuti chair on a brushed aluminum porch, the level-headed Gane would simply mutter in response, "When you gots the kraut, you gots the kraut. You don't play the kraut. You feels the kraut." His dismissal from such criticism is just, as Neu! reissues illuminate. Though Neu's rhythmic elements flow directly in to Stereolab's output, Stereolab album were far more detailed and lush affairs. Inarguably, there are traces of their kraut forefathers on all Stereolab records, but they lie under twenty additional layers of piano, woodwinds, and harmonies. An animal certainly should not be compared to the fossilized skeleton of its predecessors.

Take the Sound-Dust tracks "Gus the Mynah Bird" and "Nothing to Do with Me," songs which ostensibly motor on Neu fuel. Melting horns, a lovely verbal indignation of military, space-out reverb flashes in the coda, and a slight hiccup and stutter in the beat go beyond the call of kraut's duty. Neu, and the rest of kraut's figures, never reached such absinthe-hazed detail. The ancient critics decried, "Ach, they are still just Neu meeting the Beach Boys, Bacharach and Gainsbourg." There was some truth in this; "Naught More Terrific Than Man" undeniably lounges on the smooth brass, martini vibes, and latent sexuality of Bacharach and Gainsbourg, and drizzles the most demented moments of the Beach Boys. However, those ingredients had never been baked together with such studious precision and Rhine Delta soul. Gane devoted his life to Teutonic toots and trips and Frano fun when most other figures had either eroded away or moved on to music for the harbors of their primitive flying machines.

The trademark sounds of Stereolab-- incessant tintinnabulation, endless brittle grooves, decorative fluttering fluff, studio swirls, modulating bass, and flat, hiply disinterested female vocals-- drench Sound-Dust, but variety, timing, and focus sharpen the album, making this particular simmering stew more palatable than previous recordings. The ingredients are not vastly different than the preceding Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, but that album seemed a befuddling galaxy of a mess due to its sequencing and timing, which centered around the plodding maw of the 11½-minute "Blue Milk."

Sound-Dust, on the other hand, ebbs, shifts, dips and morphs just when it needs to, and at times, slight moments before you expect it to. It contains more kinds of keyboarded instruments, and more kinds of xylophonic instruments, and more kinds of brass instruments, and more kinds of dizzying effects. And on "The Black Arts," in a rare moment of emotion, Laetitia Sadier's wunderbaritone vocals and lyrics actually become the crux. That is, until chunky drums and cyclones of harpsichord spool the groove around her neck.

"Space Moth" rides the highway lines of bass into the horizon, but suddenly burps into the most tuneful pop-- modeled on an actual hook. Yet, "Captain EasyChord," Sound-Dust's first single, dominates the album only three tracks in. Gane's slide guitar slices through layers of plucks and bops with melodic acuity. Here, Stereolab is the sweetheart of the kraut-rodeo, until the song unexpectedly skips into a Gates of Dawn-era Pink Floyd whistle-along. Gane's slide-guitar briefly appears again in the PCP poi of "Double Rocker." Simply dismiss it as lounge, and miss out on the rich, gentle mindmelt.

At their time of release, each Stereolab album was touted as "the only one you really need." Sound-Dust stakes claim to this proclamation, but more importantly, proves that Stereolab indeed have two, maybe three albums you really need. So go ahead. If legend and Christian dogma hold true, Gane is burning in hell for this.

-Brent DiCrescenzo