For a band who've always embraced the past's vision of the future, the recent AI-generated Stereolab video did not make sense to me. Thankfully, that artistic misstep did not indicate that the band had lost their way. The familiar charms of this lot are in the grooves of the wildly-lovable Instant Holograms on Metal Film, their new record on Warp.
Their first official studio album since 2008's Chemical Chords (I'm not counting 2010's Not Music since that was made up of leftovers from the 2008 record), this new offering should please fans of this band who've been here (like me) since 1992 or so. Instant Holograms on Metal Film manages to sort of sum up the best bits of this lot's peak years, while not attempting any drastic shuffling of the 'Lab sound. Thank goodness for that.
"Melodie is a Wound", the first real classic number here, is blissful. The hook is airy, and the cut gathers momentum until clattering metallic noise interrupts that progress. It's part Kraftwerk, part Sergio Mendes. In other words, peak Stereolab. Elsewhere, another early single from this record, "Transmuted Matter" pulses and throbs, a rhythmic thing of wonder. That one is a real highlight here, as is "Flashes from Everywhere", a more expansive selection which offers up another reminder of what a glorious instrument the voice of Laetitia Sadier is. That said, one of my favorites on Instant Holograms on Metal Film is the hypnotic "Electrified Teenybop!", a percolating instrumental. Aside from that one, there's not much else here of the denser sort of material we found on Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996) (though "Esemplastic Creeping Eruption" comes pretty close), but there is a lot of the brighter sort of jazz-pop excursions of 1997's Dots and Loops coursing through the veins of this 2025 effort.
In their peak years, each proper Stereolab album seemed to push the stylistic envelope a little, or reveal a new direction being pursued. There's no big sea change here on Instant Holograms on Metal Film. This then is almost a "greatest hits" record in the way that it's a stew -- a Bouillabaisse then -- of all the elements which made Stereolab albums such pleasant listens in the last three (!) decades. And, let's be clear, it's fairly pop (at least in terms of how Stereolab defines it). There's not much that would make you recall the rough experimentalism of their early sides, though plenty of tracks do soar in the same way that "Orgiastic" and "Super-Electric" did from an era when the first George Bush was still holding on to office. For those who came in on "Wow and Flutter" or "Pinball" a bit later, there's going to be a lot here that you will likely embrace easily. For newer fans, Instant Holograms on Metal Film is the best encapsulation of the charms and talents of Stereolab as a listener is likely to be able to ever find this side of the last century.
Instant Holograms on Metal Film by Stereolab is out now via Warp.
[Photo: Joe Dilworth]