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It's time to welcome a new term to your modern music vocabulary: post rock. The expression (it's been knocking around for a few years in scenester circles, natch) is used to describe music that travels beyond the three-minute song boundaries of guitar rock and ventures into a virtual Alice in Wonderland world of experimental sounds. Post rockers aren't afraid of samples, 20-minute dub-jazz excursions, heavily ironic easy listening produced on vintage keyboards (hello Stereolab)...
Angela Lewis, The Independent (19-04-1996)
When I was doing the homework for this post (I don’t carry all this shit around in my head, only most of it…) I came across this great cartoon strip:
Fell in love with Stereolab’s sound after seeing them in a drunken haze on The Word (was I initially seduced by Lætitia Sadier’s gorgeous accent? probably).
There are some lovely numbers here; some race along against a frenzy of harsh keyboards, some bubble with hazy ambience whilst others meander melodically- like a dreampop take on Franciose Hardy.
(their records) sound more like arid experiments than music born of emotional need.
Barney Hoskyns- Mojo (1996)
With their borrowings from early, obscure Kraftwerk and hip obtuse sources, [Stereolab] sound like a band of rock critics rather than musicians.
Dave Simpson -The Guardian.
I think they were just a bit too clever and aloof for the journos- laddish rock music, faux mod 'britpop' and grunge being the order of the day.
I think of this LP as transformed Velvet Underground. One of the songs (i think it's "We're not AOR") features an organ that plays three chords and holds on to them. It reminds me of the similar organ fadeout in the Velvet's "What Goes On."
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