Emperor Tomato Ketchup

Stereolab

album cover

Life in a Blender

When the Jetsons go for a family drive, this is what might be playing in their hovercraft. As the beloved animated TV series of the '60s did, Stereolab's fourth album Emperor Tomato Ketchup offers a stylized (and idealized) vision of the future—it's a friendly new frontier, with technological solutions waiting around every corner and possibilities expanding in all directions. The music bubbles along, sleekness epitomized, gliding boldly toward some space-age bachelor pad. Where everything old—even those buoyantly optimistic singing groups of the 1960s, like the Association—can be rejiggered into something wondrous and new again.

Few rock acts have repurposed the random detritus of pop culture quite as spectacularly as Stereolab did on this, its most fully realized statement. The collective led by multi-instrumentalist Tim Gane manipulates small recurring loops similar to those used by hip-hop beatmakers and electronica DJs into richly textured collages. These include spry skating-rink organ and arena-rock guitar machinations (see "The Noise of Carpet").

Lead voice Laetitia Sadier and expert harmony singer Mary Hansen pick up on the junior-jumble spirit of the instrumentals, spiking the songs with abstract ideas from theoretical philosophers and leftist thinkers. Sometimes they sing the surreal and cerebral lyrics in close harmony. But more often, their winsome voices move in parallel orbits and carefully synchronized exchanges of call-and-response.

Emperor aligns with similarly spirited works of life-in-a-blender juxtaposition from Beck (see p. 64), the Beastie Boys (see p. 57), and others of its day. It's a triumph of assimilation, in which disconnected ideas become part of a cohesive, if slightly surreal, scheme. Some critics called the result "post rock," but really no shorthand designation does justice to these alluring sounds, which come zooming in from some distant utopia, offer glimpses of life there, and then speed silently away.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1996, Elektra
Key Tracks: "The Noise of Carpet," "Metronomic Underground," "Anonymous Collective"
Catalog Choice: Transient Random Noise Bursts with Announcements.
Next Stop: Os Mutantes: Mutantes
After That: Beck: Midnite Vultures
Book Pages: 739–740

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Comments:

#1 from Jay, Dallas - 12/28/2009 1:27

Great great great great album. The first of their series in working with the Chicago band Tortoise. Though I think this phase of the band really peaked with the release of “Dots and Loops” and “Cobra and Phases Group . . .”

One of my top 3 bands of all time.

1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die