Stereolab: Aluminum Tunes

Rarely is a band as aptly named as Stereolab. Like a bunch of mad scientists mixing together their favorite musical ingredients, Stereolab has been producing avant-pop with such remarkable consistency and frequency that it raises the question of whether its members have lives outside the studio. Inevitably, any band as acclaimed and prolific as Stereolab is bound to attract its share of occasionally justified criticism: Some deride the band's wholesale and unabashed appropriation of Neu!'s chugging riffs and the liberally borrowed exotica of lounge icons Juan Garcia Esquivel and Burt Bacharach. But Stereolab puts all these elements together in songs novel enough to serve as their own defense. More frustrating is the group's tendency to release dozens of singles and collectibles in as many different hard-to-find forms as possible. After all, Stereolab has only been around since 1991, yet Aluminum Tunes is its third "Switched On" rarities collection, and a 25-track double-album at that. Surely the fact that Stereolab even deigns to compile its audio arcana shows that the band cares about fans who can't otherwise find much of its music. The downside is that these albums inspire a frenzied rush to buy up the original issue of everything the band even breathes on, but the obvious upside is that, hey, there's more Stereolab to go around. Aluminum Tunes brings together the whole of the 1995 Amorphous Body Study Centre installation piece, a handful of tour seven-inches, and a couple of remixes, as well as songs from the Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Mars Audiac Quintet, and Dots And Loops sessions. It's clear that Stereolab has been heading in a more easy-listening direction, not unlike sometime Stereolabber Sean O'Hagan's High Llamas project. But if the band considers Aluminum Tunes' material unworthy of inclusion on its albums, then fans have a lot to look forward to.