Schema - Schema EP

Another quickie "thank you" post in the wake of this blog's 500,000th visitor yesterday...

In my Mary Hansen (Stereolab) post from about five years ago, I mentioned that a couple of years prior to her untimely death in a London road accident, Mary was involved in a one-off collaboration with members of the Seattle alt-rock group Hovercraft in a collective called Schema, whose sole release was an obscure five-song EP.

To save you the trouble of searching it out for yourselves, here it is for your enjoyment - the Schema EP, recorded and remixed in Seattle in 1999, and released on indie label 5 Rue Christine Records on October 3rd, 2000. All of the songs on this disc are great, with my personal favorite being "Far From Where We Began", featuring Mary's voice prominently:

Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Stereolab - Eaten Horizons Or The Electrocution Of Rock

(Yup - back-to-back Stereolab posts! I must be slipping!)

I've previously posted a couple of Stereolab-related write-ups to this blog in the (recent) past - love this band! If you enjoy them as much as I do, then you'll definitely be into this post: an impossibly hard-to-find collection of heretofore unreleased band demos and outtakes from throughout their long career.

This disc was released in Germany in 2007 by En/Of, a sublabel of Bottrop-Boy Records. Bottrop-Boy (apparently named after a minor transit station on a German passenger train line) appears to specialize in releases by obscure avant-garde music artists dabbling in experimental electronic sounds and free-form modern jazz. However, its sublabel, En/Of, ratchets up this obscurity/exclusivity factor to the nth degree. All of En/Of's releases (mostly by bands that even I've never heard of) are on heavyweight vinyl only and produced in minuscule amounts, to a maximum of no more than 100 copies each. Each of their releases is packaged with a separate signed and numbered limited-edition artwork (painting, etching, photograph, etc.) specially created for the album by a renowned artist.

Needless to say, the combination of limited availability and art-snob appeal leads to this sublabel's discs going for big bucks, way more than the average music fan is willing to shell out - even if they'd actually heard of the fucking band... This makes En/Of essentially an exclusive boutique label, the musical equivalent of Versace or Jimmy Choo (sorry - those are the only chi-chi designers I can think of at the moment; hey, I'm a guy - I don't spend a lot of time contemplating high fashion!). To me, all of this artsy-fartsy foofarol seems a little unnecessary, recherche and precious, and does little but cater to bloodless music aesthetes with money to apparently burn . . . but heck, that's just my opinion.

As I mentioned above, this disc contains never-before released sound ideas and rough proto-demo versions of Stereolab tunes, some of which eventually appeared on various 'Groop' albums, including Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements, Mars Audiac Quintet, Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Dots & Loops. Other songs provided here have, to the best of my knowledge, never before seen the light of day in any version on any official or unofficial band release.

Here's the lineup:

1. Crest
2. John Cage Bubblegum
3. Mountain Instrumental
4. Reich Song
5. Cybele’s Reverie Pt. 1
6. Cybele’s Reverie Pt. 2
7. French Disko
8. Happy Pop Song
9. Jenny Ondioline
10. Lucia Pamela (ICC)
11. Drone Instrumental (with Nurse With Wound)
12. Plastic Pulse One
13. Plastic Pulse Two
14. Plastic Pulse Three
15. Plastic Pulse Four
16. Sad Chicago Organ
17. Brigitte Pt. 1
18. Brigitte Pt. 2
19. Infinity Girl Pt. 1
20. Infinity Girl Pt. 2
21. Cobra Tune
22. Heavy Munich
23. ZigZag Song
24. Monday Song

Here you are - Stereolab's uber-rare Eaten Horizons Or The Electrocution Of Rock, released by En/Of Records on September 30th, 2007 in a run of 100 vinyl copies (each of which included a high-quality Mathias Poledna print, signed by the artist (yeah, I don't know who the hell he is either . . . whatever; I'm just into this for the music)). Took me forever to find a copy of this . . . thus I bestow it unto you all as well.

Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Stereolab - Solar Throw-Away 7"

Stereolab's 2006 double-A side tour single, sold at only a handful of venues in Europe and North America during the band's extremely brief series of concerts in the early part of that year.

By the time of this release, it already seemed as though the band was making plans to wind down from its long career. The death of Mary Hansen in late 2002 and its aftermath (which

included the recording of the group's Hansen tribute album Margerine Eclipse, released in 2004) seemed to sap a lot of drive and energy out of Stereolab, and understandably so. That's not to say that the group's creative juices had run dry - there was still plenty of good music to come from them, including the Fab Four Suture collection later in 2006 and Chemical Chords in mid-2008. But it should be noted that around the same period as

the 2006 tour came two "best of" compilation releases, the three-disc Oscillions From The Anti-Sun retrospective in late 2005 and Serene Velocity (featuring highlights from their years with the Elektra label) in late 2006. Putting a series of comps out in such a short period of time isn't exactly a move made by a band planning on hanging around for very long . . .

But even with the time left allotted to them, Stereolab didn't rest on its laurels. Up until the very end (marked by 2010's Not Music, released more than a year after the band announced it was going on permanent hiatus), the group continued refining and experimenting with its signature sound. This record provided here is no exception.

So, for your enjoyment, here's a hard-to-find Stereolab rarity, the Solar Throw-Away 7", released on their label Duophonic on March 1st, 2006. Have a listen, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Uilab - Fires EP

Here's another one of Stereolab's many collaborations during their long band history, this time with New York City-based post-rock instrumental group Ui.   UI, founded in 1990, was known for its frequent use of two bass guitars in their sample-heavy, electronica/dub music, along with other uncommon instruments such as the banjo, tuba and timpani.  These guys (Sasha Frere-Jones (now a writer with The New Yorker), Clem Waldmann and Wilbo Wright) were active for well over a decade, releasing three LPs and numerous singles and EPs before breaking up in 2004.

This particular EP was recorded at Southern Studios, London in the summer of 1996, while Ui was on a European tour with Stereolab serving as their opening act.  However, the label didn't get around to mixing and releasing the EP until well over a year later, in late October 1997.  This EP features, among other songs, an excellent cover of Brian Eno's "St. Elmo's Fire", off of his 1975 Another Green World album, along with three radical remixes of the same song.

I don't have any long-winded story related to this disc, other than I recall grabbing this at the old Virgin Megastore in Grapevine, Texas shortly after it was released.  I was just listening to it the other day, and thought that others might like to have a listen to it as well.  Sometimes, brevity is best!

So, here you are - Uilab's Fires EP, released in February 1998 on Duophonic Records (Stereolab's privately owned label).  Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Mary Hansen - Hybird EP

I should have been a Stereolab fan long before I actually became one, but for some reason the band and I never connected up.  They had long been on the periphery of my consciousness, but it took years for the connection between us to be made.

Oddly enough, I had the opportunity to be into Stereolab from nearly the very beginning. The band made their first U.S. appearance in the fall of 1992, with a week of shows in selected clubs on the East Coast. After their debut gig at the Knitting Factory in New York and a follow-on performance at the legendary Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey, Stereolab travelled to the Nation's Capital for a show at the 9:30 Club on the evening of Sunday, October 25th. That afternoon, however, the band had scheduled an in-store performance at Vinyl Ink Records (now long defunct) in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland, playing stuff off of their debut LP Peng!

I was actually in the store that very afternoon, a couple of hours earlier, trolling for CDs to replace some that had recently been stolen out of my car while it was parked overnight in my 'secure' apartment garage in Arlington (those thieving bastards took some great stuff - early import copies of stuff like The Fall's Dragnet and The Smiths' Hatful of Hollow - things that ended up taking years to replace). I messed around at Vinyl Ink for about an hour or so, but couldn't find anything I was looking for. I noticed the flyers around the store announcing the Stereolab gig, and I know I walked by the open area of the store where they would be playing several times during my visit that day (the mikes and cords were already set up). But I had no idea who the band was at the time, and didn't know a thing about their music. Plus, I didn't feel like hanging around Silver Spring all day . . . so I bolted. In hindsight, I made a big mistake.

It was years later that I began getting into the band. While on my grad school internship up in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the summer of 1996, I went to a show at TT The Bear's Place in Central Square that featured three bands, including the headliner The Kelley Deal 6000.  I enjoyed the music so much that over that night and the next day, I acquired the latest releases of all three, including The Laurels and Trona. Although at the time I didn't like Trona's album as much as I hoped I would, one song on it stood out - "Wow And Flutter", which I soon discovered was a cover version of a Stereolab song. After this revelation, I quickly ran out to find the source of the original - 1994's Mars Audiac Quintet, which I tracked down at the old HMV store in Brattle Square, near Harvard University.

With the first listen, I became an instant fan. Songs like "International Coloring Contest", "Ping Pong" and "Fiery Yellow" helped carry me through that summer. It was the music itself that first drew me in; It took me a little while to fully comprehend the Gallic-inflected, politically-charged lyrics of French-born lead singer Laetitia Sadier.  But I was jazzed enough about this band that I immediately set out to acquire their back catalogue.

The first of their past albums that I purchased was their most recent one (for that time), Emperor Tomato Ketchup, released in April 1996. I couldn't have picked a better one to stoke my Stereolab fandom - Emperor Tomato Ketchup was the first album where the band began to expand its musical horizons and move away from the "drone" rock that had been the hallmark of their earlier albums. On this album, Stereolab ventured into the realms of hard rock ("The Noise Of Carpet"), hip-hop ("Metronomic Underground"), funk ("Spark Plug") and dance music ("Emperor Tomato Ketchup"), while still retaining the group's unique sound and flair. I thought practically every song on this album was fantastic, but it was through the ones that became my particular favorites ("Cybele's Reverie" and "Les Yper Sound") that I first became more completely aware of the vocal byplay between Sadier and backing vocalist Mary Hansen.

Mary Hansen was born in Brisbane, Australia in 1966, one of eight children of a member of the Australian parliament and his wife, a former opera singer. Mary's early life was fairly uneventful; she graduated from high school at 17, and for a while worked at a bank and other businesses in and around the Brisbane area. Tiring of her routine life in Australia, Mary moved to London, England in 1988, where she began dabbling on the fringes of the local music scene there.  She soon became a backing singer for local indie rock artists The Wolfhounds (one of their songs was included on the celebrated and influential NME C86 cassette compilation in 1986).

At a show in 1989, The Wolfhounds opened for the band McCarthy, at the time a big name in English indie rock. Hansen met McCarthy guitarist and band founder Tim Gane at the gig, and they quickly became friends. Gane broke up McCarthy soon after that aforementioned gig, and with his girlfriend Sadier and transplanted Kiwi musician Martin Kean (briefly a member of New Zealand's The Chills) began working on a new project that quickly evolved into Stereolab. Gane didn't forget his new friend, though. He invited Mary to join the new band just before the band's first recordings; by the time Stereolab's first LP, Peng!, was released in April 1992, Mary was a full-fledged member, playing guitar and keyboards and contributing backup vocals.

Hansen's voice was the perfect complement to Sadier's; their singing styles and vocal range were very similar . . . but different enough to add nuance and color to many of the band's songs. Those two songs I mentioned above, "Cybele's Reverie" and "Les Yper Sound", were the ones that first hooked me on the depth and quality of their intertwined voicess. But as the years passed and my Stereolab fandom (and collection) grew, I found many more examples of this byplay that I fell in love with: "Sadistic" and "Lo Boob Oscillator" from Refried Ectoplasm, "Miss Modular" and "Refractions In The Plastic Pulse" off of Dots & Loops; "Captain Easychord" from Sound-Dust. By the early 2000s, Hansen and Sadier had all but perfected their unique 'sing-song' style of vocal counterpoint and harmony that helped establish Stereolab as one of the best, most influential bands of the era. As far as I was concerned, "The Groop" had never put out a bad song, and I looked forward to each new release every year or so.

Stereolab released Sound-Dust in late 2001, and in 2002 they began preparing for their next album by building their own studio in France. There was a little band friction over that summer, as Gane and Sadier ended their long romantic relationship. But they elected to remain together as band mates, and keep Stereolab going as an operating concern. As a lead-up to commencing recording of their next album in their new home, in October their label released ABC Music: The Radio 1 Sessions, a compilation of the band's live recordings over the years on the BBC. At the end of that year, the group was preparing to leave London and relocate to Bordeaux for their next recording session. All in all, things were looking pretty positive for the band.

On the afternoon of December 9th, 2002, Mary Hansen was killed when a truck backed into her while she was riding her bicycle near London's Finsbury Square.

At that time, I was reading a lot of online news, regularly reviewing major domestic and international Internet sources like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, SkyNews and Reuters. I came across the news of Mary's death while browsing the December 10th version of BBC News, and I was just . . . stunned. It seemed unreal, and unfathomable. I never knew much about her private life or personality - all of the members of Stereolab were enigmas in that regard, offering up few personal details in their music and interviews. But Mary's loss was a significant blow to me. What I knew of her, I knew through her music . . . and now the source of that music was no more, gone in an instant. It was hard to wrap my head around it. The jolt I received from her death was just as great as the one I received less than two weeks later, when the sudden death of The Clash's Joe Strummer made international headlines.

Stereolab was just as stunned as their fans were; the band went on a long hiatus as its members grieved for their lost friend. But near the end of 2003, Stereolab began to regroup, and by that fall had released their first post-Hansen recording, the Instant 0 In The Universe EP. The band continued releasing albums and EPs up until their breakup in late 2009. I quite enjoyed all of these releases, including long-players like 2004's Margerine Eclipse (essentially a Hansen tribute album) and 2008's Chemical Chords, and I attended a couple of the band's tours during that time. But as good as the music continued to be, there always seemed to be something . . . missing from late-period Stereolab in terms of their musical approach - and that missing piece was the small but essential contribution Mary Hansen made to each and every recording.

Hansen had a very active musical life outside of Stereolab, recording vocals on releases by Mouse On Mars and The High Llamas, and teaming up with members of Seattle band Hovercraft to form the space-rock collective Schema (which released an EP in 2000).  But very little of Hansen's own music was available until 2005, over two years after her passing, when her friends gathered up the few recordings she had made on her own and released them on the EP Hybird. The disc (featuring Hansen's own artwork) contains three songs that she completed before her death, plus a fourth previously unfinished track that was completed by her old Stereolab bandmate Andy Ramsey. The music is infused with the signature 'Stereolab sound', but filtered through Hansen's own musical esthetic. The best track, in my opinion, is "Twenty Feet Behind", a gentle, swirling wash of organ, xylophone and drums, suffused with Mary's signature "Ah-ahs" . . . beautiful.

But I'll let you hear the rest for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Here, for your listening pleasure, is the only solo release by Stereolab's Mary Hansen, the Hybird EP, released posthumously on Horizontal Records on February 18th, 2005. Have a listen, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Stereolab - Rose, My Rocket-Brain! EP

Here's a three-song EP by Stereolab, made available on a 3" CD at shows during their 2004 Margerine Eclipse tour. I got mine at their show at DC's 9:30 Club that year - great show, by the way. To the best of my knowledge, these songs haven't been released on any subsequent Stereolab compilation. And since the band called it quits a year ago, I don't expect to see this released on anything anytime soon.

All three songs are superb, especially the last, "University Microfilms International". I like the first one too (apparently, there was an error on the CD label, as the names of the first two songs, "Rose, My Rocket-Brain! (Rose, le cerveau électronique de ma fusée!)" and "Banana Monster ne répond plus" were transposed in error - "Rose" is first). Listen closely to the lyrics of "Rose" - I love how Stereolab inserts pointed political commentary into their songs!

Here ya go - enjoy:

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Turn On - Turn On

A one-off side project featuring Tim Gane and Andy Ramsey from Stereolab and Sean O'Hagen of the High Llamas, released in 1997 on Duophonic Records (Stereolab's label). Instead of a meld between the sound of the two bands, this record sounds totally like a Stereolab instrumental album, circa 1992-93 (think The Groop Played "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music" or Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements). But that's not a knock on the music - it's actually a pretty good album, and a required listen for devoted Stereolab fans.

This album got no airplay or support whatsoever when it came out - I found it almost by accident in a bin at the old Virgin Megastore in Grapevine, TX. But it was a fortunate find. Here - have a listen, and let me know what you think:

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