Stereolab Chemical Chords On 2 x Vinyl LP

The eleventh album in Stereolab's illustrious career, Chemical Chords took form in early-2007 when Tim Gane started messing with a series of about seventy tiny drum loops on top of improvised chord sequences using piano and vibraphone. With typical prolificacy, the band labored over the summer at their studio, Instant Zero (in Bordeaux, France), helping transform these blueprints into the luminous new songs found here. For all the breathless spontaneity of its invention, Chemical Chords is arguably the band’s tautest, most highly focused work this century.

Chemical Chords is a collection of “purposefully short, dense, fast pop songs,” according to Gane, brimming with Motown-like drums, O’Hagan’s finest baroque-pop brass and string arrangements and etched with some of Sadier’s most eloquent, mellifluous vocal performances to date. Nonetheless, it is classic Stereolab, a perfect equipoise between an implausibly cool past and a shamelessly exotic future.

Stereolab Chemical Chords Track Listing

1. Neon Beanbag
2. Three Women
3. One Finger Symphony
4. Chemical Chords
5. The Ecstatic Static
6. Valley Hi!
7. Silver Sands
8. Pop Molecule (Molecular Pop 1)
9. Self Portrait With Electric Brain
10. Nous Vous Demandons Pardon
11. Cellulose Sunshine
12. Fractal Dream Of A Thing
13. Daisy Click Clack
14. Vortical Phonothèque