Stereolab - Sound-Dust (3LP)

Pulling a copy of Sound-Dust from the Stereolab bin always feels like finding a hidden door in a familiar house. Released in 2001, the band’s seventh studio album arrives late in their first act, after the imperial run of Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Dots and Loops, and right before a long pause in the wake of tragedy. It’s a record that trades brute motorik for detail and color, still rhythmically hypnotic but more like an elaborate toy city than a freeway. On Sound-Dust, the grooves breathe.

The Chicago connection matters. Stereolab made the album with John McEntire of Tortoise and Jim O’Rourke of Gastr del Sol, two architects of that city’s post-rock laboratory. You can hear their fingerprints in the tactile production, each clink of vibraphone, plume of woodwind, and softly distorted organ sitting in a pocket that feels handmade. The record has that patient Chicago studio glow, the sense that someone stayed late to nudge a tambourine hit or tuck a bass clarinet underneath a Rhodes chord, not to show off but to make the structure lock.

“Captain Easychord” is the song people point to, and for good reason. It opens like a toy piano marching band, then pivots midway into a sunnier, looser coda that feels like stepping from studio light into afternoon sun. It’s classic Stereolab, the trick where repetition becomes revelation. “Baby Lulu” moves in softer focus, flutes and brushed drums under Laetitia Sadier’s calm vocal, while “Double Rocker” flickers between suites with a cut-and-glide logic that rewards repeat listens. “Space Moth” lets the rhythm section chug while the arrangement blooms at the edges, an object lesson in how the band keeps things floating without losing the pulse. These songs don’t aim for a single peak. They stack small peaks until the landscape turns strange and beautiful.

Vocals are a big part of why this record lingers. Sadier’s cool delivery and Mary Hansen’s high, airy harmonies braid into something instantly identifiable, a line of melody that can sound like critique and lullaby at once. The bilingual lyrics still sneak politics into the pocket, not as lecture, more as posture and phrasing, ideas smuggled inside a sugar shell. Knowing that Hansen died in 2002 adds a quiet charge to Sound-Dust. It’s the last Stereolab album released during her lifetime, and you can’t help but tune into those harmonies as a kind of embodied memory. The way their voices blend on “Captain Easychord” and “Baby Lulu” catches in the heart, even as the band sidesteps sentiment with clean lines and a taste for odd chords.

Critics at the time heard the shift. The record picked up strong notices for its baroque color and the way it channeled bossa, library music, and minimalism into something playfully rigorous. It isn’t a lunge for headlines. It’s a refinement, an artist at ease with its own language. The band had already stretched far across the 90s, and here they tighten the frame, bringing the focus closer to tuned percussion, reeds, and small rhythmic traps that snap shut with a smile.

On vinyl, Sound-Dust really makes its case. The stereo field opens up, and those little production choices land with a pleasant thud and ping. The organ’s low end purrs without mud, the mallets pop, and the horn and string voicings feel like they live in the room with the drum kit. If you can snag a clean pressing, do it. Stereolab albums on vinyl are built for the format, and Sound-Dust vinyl might be the most quietly addictive of the lot. If you’re crate-digging at a Melbourne record store, keep an eye out. If you’d rather buy Stereolab records online, this title is often in stock thanks to recent reissue campaigns that have put the catalog back within reach for fans who missed it the first time.

What keeps me returning is how unhurried it feels. The band is still chasing the motor, but they’re less interested in speed than in shape, in how a chord change alters the color of a phrase, in how a clave pattern shifts when a marimba joins the party. It’s the sort of record that turns a living room into a small cinema. You drop the needle, the room rearranges, and for forty-odd minutes the world is paced by precision and play.

If you love Stereolab vinyl for its mix of head and heart, Sound-Dust belongs on your shelf. It’s a late-summer album from a group at full powers, the sound of a laboratory humming, elegant and alive. And for anyone hunting beyond the obvious titles, it’s a sweet spot. Put it on, let the grooves breathe, and remember why we chase great pressings in the first place.