Club Contact

The new MP3 blog from London's club Contact. The idea is to allow people to hear new music they wouldn't have otherwise found but, if anyone has any copyright issues with a particular song, i'll take the link down. Songs are only available for a limited amount of time.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

To an NME-buying fourteen-year-old in the year sandwiched by the death of grunge and the birth of Britpop, Stereolab were like nothing on earth. Although many of their reference points are quite clear (Hardy, Gainsbourg, Kraftwerk, Can, Faust, Neu!) their blend of metronomic electro, timeless gallic-pop classicism and relentless Marxist dogma remains unique today. Songs as giddily catchy as Ping Pong aren't supposed to have lyrics like:

"It's alright 'cos the historical pattern has shown,
how the economical cycle tends to revolve,
In a round of decades, three stages stand out in a loop,
A slump and war then peel back to square one and back for more

There's only millions that lose their jobs and homes and sometimes accents
There's only millions that die in their bloody wars, it's alright
It's only their lives and the lives of their next of kin that they are losing"

Laetitia Sadier's lyrics next to the late Mary Hanson's ba ba ba bas sound incongruous until you remember that, in the year Serge released Bonnie & Clyde and Initials B.B, Paris was aflame with a student-led revolution.

Stereolab have continued to plough an increasingly inscrutable furrow over the years and released something akin to a greatest hits package, Oscillons From The Anti-Sun, in 2005, quite a leap for a band who typically deleted their singles as soon as they looked likely to chart.


Buy Stereolab stuff

Stereolab - Ping Pong

7 Comments:

  • At 5:23 pm, Blogger Chrille said…

    Hey Shari! Since you're such an expert on international pop I thought I'd ask you this question.

    My dad has an Eastern European music channel where I saw the video with a girl-duo called 2 Lips who sang a really, really great song. It wasn't sung in English. Have you heard of them before? And if you have, do you know where I could find some mp3's? They were truly brilliant!

     
  • At 7:36 pm, Blogger ShariVari said…

    I think they're Greek, aren't they. I've heard a song called I Wanna Be A Star but i don't have an MP3. If you find one, let me know!

     
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