It's #ninetiesfriday an d today we're going to get in the good ol' 90s time machine and travel back to 1997 to take a look (and listen) the fifth studio album by English-French rock band, Stereolab.
Dots and Loops
I remember a friend of a friend bringing over a cassette tape of Stereolab and it really caught my attention, so I went out and picked up their latest, which was dots and Loops, on white and green/blue marble vinyl :D
They released one single before the album dropped in September of '97 called "Miss Modular".
And shortly after that they released the full, double LP, Dots and Loops, which reached number 19 on the UK Albums Chart, as well as number 111 on the Billboard 200 chart in the US.
The album was recorded on Digital Audio Tape and produced with Pro Tools, both of which were fairly new in 1997.
Tim Gane, co-founder and guitarist for Stereolab said of the digital recording process, "Digital audio recording seemed like a child's toy, making lots of little loops of the bass, guitar and the drum parts, not having to play everything through from beginning to end, plopping things in where you wanted them and moving things around to see how it sounded. We loved it!"
I have not listened to these guys in years, then the other day I was picking a record off the shelf to listen to and my hand recached for this one. I actually forgot the vinyl was colored, so that was a fun surprise.
At the time this style of music was not something I really listened to, and I feel that this album opened me up to house music and eventually EDM and even dubstep years later.
As much as this album should be listened to on anything but a phone speaker, I'll link the albums opening song and hope you are able to listen to it with some quality speakers or headphones.
Though the sound and style is electronic, they use some older instruments on this album to get their unique sound, including a Farfisa organ. You can hear it featured in "Parsec".
If you want to hear all the goodness of this album on your favorite music service, try these links :)
