Stereolab
Sound-Dust
[Elektra]
Rating: 7.4
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