A guest series by Fraser Pettigrew (aka our New Zealand correspondent)
#17: Stereolab – The Free Design (1999)
A beneficial by-product of writing this series on EPs has been the pleasant rediscovery of records that I hadn’t listened to in quite a while. And in the case of The Free Design by Stereolab, seemingly not ever listened to properly and realising how much better it was than I remembered.
The Free Design was the lead single from Stereolab’s sixth full-length studio album Cobra And Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky Night. Not only did the band’s penchant for absurd album titles reach new heights, the music also further extended the rhythmic sophistication and multi-instrumental arrangements from preceding album Dots And Loops.
Like Dots And Loops and Emperor Tomato Ketchup before that, Cobra And Phases was produced by Tortoise drummer John McEntire, this time with the additional assistance of alternative-guitarist-at-large Jim O’Rourke. Emperor Tomato Ketchup was apparently also the first time Stereolab used loops rather than drones as compositional starters, although the overall effect on the music isn’t as marked as the shift that occurred on Dots And Loops, where more complex rhythms including some synthetic percussion (even flirting with drum’n’bass styles), brass arrangements, and a slicker studio sound stood out.
Cobra And Phases continued that movement with repeated use of somewhat staccato Latin-jazz rhythms and modal vocal melodies that led some critics to bemoan a lack of variety across the album. Without having read any such criticism I nevertheless leapt to a similar conclusion myself, feeling that the hitherto felicitous blend of 60s French pop and German avant-garde had skewed towards too much easy listening and not enough Krautrock for my liking.
Given that barely two or three weeks would have passed between my purchase of The Free Design and the arrival of the album, I suspect that the EP never got many spins before my disappointment with the LP tainted it by association. Imagine my surprise and delight, therefore, when I slapped it on again for the first time in many years, at rather higher than intended volume, and thought cor blimey, what a ripper, or whatever it is that young people say these days.
Granted, the title track is practically the archetype of the pseudo-samba style that was overused on the album and through subsequent years, but it is one of the catchiest iterations of the template, definite single material, embellished with almost Dexys-like brass parts. Straight after that, however, we plunge into a delightfully squelchy synth-heavy romp on Escape Pod (From The World of Medical Observations) which really popped at volume, reminding me that I tend to listen to music too much in the background instead of up at 11 on the amp so it flays the skin off your face. Plays havoc with my hearing aids but fuck it, yer a lang time deef, to coin a Scots phrase.
The B-side tracks are both well along the pop tune spectrum but in a more relaxed tempo than the lead track. With Friends Like These is a quaint little diatribe, showing extreme intolerance for the intolerant, hating on the haters, all beneath the jauntiest little tune and sweet arrangement. Les Aimies Des Mêmes is a bit more downbeat, built around a bass line that could have been lifted from a Blaxploitation soundtrack, and concluding with a distinctly jazzy muted trumpet solo.
The Free Design, in case you aren’t already aware of the title reference, was a family vocal group in the late 1960s and early 70s that had little commercial success but enjoyed a renaissance in recent years thanks to artists such as Stereolab, Beck and Sean O’Hagan namechecking them. They were probably too musically complex to have made the mainstream breakthrough at the time but their sophisticated arrangements and time signatures – think The Beach Boys and Swingle filtered through Benjamin Britten and modern jazz – made them ripe for retro rediscovery. Needless to say, the lyrics of the song have absolutely nothing to do with them.
As with Miss Modular, the lead single from Dots And Loops, The Free Design EP came in 12” format rather than the 10” EPs that preceded Emperor Tomato Ketchup (Cybele’s Reverie), Mars Audiac Quintet (Ping Pong) and Transient Random-Noise Bursts (Jenny Ondioline). Like those previous two lead singles you could get the 12” of The Free Design in any colour of vinyl so long as it was black. Cobra and Phases was also only issued in black vinyl, limited to 7000, unlike the spangly yellow Emperor Tomato Ketchup and the minty green and white Dots and Loops. In 1999, Vinyl was approaching its near-extinction and the modern fetish for colour was a long way off.
Having found the EP more to my liking than I had remembered, I went back and replayed the album, motivated also by the discovery in an interview that Tim Gane regarded it as the Stereolab work he was most proud of. With all this encouragement, I wasn’t surprised to find that the album held more pleasures than my memory had allowed, including the long avant-garde track Blue Milk, a succession of monorythmic variations throbbing on for over 11 minutes. Mrs P pleaded with me to make it stop after about 5, but she was out of luck. Our marriage endures in spite of it all.
Escape Pod (From The World of Medical Observations)
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 