STEREOLAB - Oscillons From The Anti-Sun

Dropped by Elektra due to sales below expectations (sic), Stereolab return to the label that launched them, Too Pure. To celebrate the (happy?) occasion, their first release back is a three-CD-plus-DVD box set, this "Oscillons From The Anti-Sun", which gathers together every track from nine singles - or rather Eps, if you go along with the band's hazy distinction on their own website. These are all the tracks taken from the Lps released between 1993 and 2001, plus "Fluorescences", the only single in this compilation not to have originated from an album.

Unlike the three "Switched On" volumes, "Oscillons From The Anti-Sun" isn't essential. Or rather, it's both essential and superfluous at once, for longtime Stereolab devotees and newcomers alike. Despite its three discs, it's nowhere near exhaustive (the fault, if fault it is, lies with the band's endless stream of non-album material), nor does it contain virtually anything unreleased. And yet I dare you to find "Fruition" or "Pain Et Spectacles" on a laser disc anywhere else. Or try explaining to a newcomer that "Cybele's Reverie", "Pinball" and "Ping Pong" - three of the finest songs Gane and Sadier ever wrote - aren't on the "Switched On" volumes but are here, yet they still need to start with those and not with "Oscillons From The Anti-Sun". After all, the entire Stereolab discography is a monument to the art of tripping up the completist: how could this new release be any different?

The formula, then, is the familiar one, but it never grows tiresome. 90s pop, so rich in references that it comes out completely new. A post-pop built from every ingredient available, one that stays remarkably fresh and unmatched even a decade on.

Here we find pretty much every era of Stereolab up until the tragic passing of Mary Hansen: it ranges from the rough, krautrock-tinged sweetness of "Jenny Ondioline" to the encounter with Jim O'Rourke and John McEntire, documented on "Captain Easychord". The period most heavily represented is the turn between the first and second half of the '90s, when Stereolab had found the formula for a pop sound that was perfect and, above all, modern and new. Reminding us of this are no fewer than five EPs: the two drawn from "Mars Audiac Quintet", the two from "Emperor Tomato Ketchup", and "Fluorescences". Inside are plenty of stories. There's the Cinderella tale of "French Disco", relegated to the B-side before becoming an airplay princess, and that of "The Noise Of Carpet", the American cousin of "Cybele's Reverie".

While the best-known tracks take the lion's share, and are probably also the finest, it's in the discovery of a few small gems that the more discerning listener will find real satisfaction. We'll mention just three, though there are more. The sweet Sadier-Hansen duet on "With Friends Like These". The comic interlude of "Moodles", a cartoonish horror dropped into a typically dreamy Sadier-style nursery rhyme that glides over every change of rhythm. "Les Yper Yper Sound", an instrumental that has nothing to do with the almost identically titled song, and one that Trans Am surely couldn't ignore.

Naturally, not everything here is perfect: a chronological ordering of the tracks would probably have been preferable. Just as it was back then, the edited version of "Jenny Ondioline" is a Michael Jordan cut down to two and a half feet (the alternate version works much better), and a few songs inevitably reveal their status as "second choice" material. Then again, it's unlikely that nine EPs could contain nothing but masterpieces. But between what are only apparent castoffs and some of the most precious gems Stereolab scattered along their decade-plus-long path, each of the three discs has a great deal to say - an awful lot, in fact.

The DVD, finally, though not particularly lavish, proves to be a real treasure. It contains, in fact, all of the band's videos (otherwise impossible to find), almost exclusively the fruit of their artistic partnership with Nick Abrahams. While you certainly couldn't call them beautiful in any conventional sense, these grainy, deliberately over-the-top naive images undeniably created an entire aesthetic category of their own. Rounding out the video section is a fine trio of live performances, essential viewing for getting a sense of just how perfect the band's onstage dynamics were, of their enviable cohesion (all the more admirable given that the group's steady members numbered only four), and of the skill of the BBC's directors: a comparison would be nothing short of humiliating for those back home who try their hand at televising music.

In closing, there's nothing left to do but issue an appeal. Others have already put it in writing, but OndaRock wholeheartedly joins the request. Now we want a collection of the little singles that, over the years, were sold only at concerts.

P.S. for collectors: The first editions of the box set also include eight 12x12 stickers of the artwork from the British EPs featured in this collection.

P.P.S. for fetishists: The whole thing smells amazing.

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30/04/2026