Chords for Stereolab - Part 1 - Interview

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ Hi, I'm Maceo and I'm very, very happy to be here today with one of my favorite bands
for a very, very long time.
We have Tim Gain and Leticia Sadier from Stereolab.
How are you guys doing?
Fine, good.
Happy to be in New York.
How long, you're spending a little while here at this time, right?
Five days.
Five days.
This is longer than you're always on tour?
No, it's very long for a tour to spend five days in one town.
Normally one day, two.
_ _ How do you feel about the new record?
_ Well, the new record is 31 songs.
That's how I see it.
It's 31 songs, _ which are split into two halves, roughly. _
One is the day side and one is the night time side.
_ I felt that as we were going on, I was getting better and better [Gb] with my lyrics.
_ [E] Also, I helped mix the [Bbm] second time and I was [N] happier with the second album,
which hopefully will come out in a few months' time.
I don't know what's going to happen with this other half of the recordings.
Are you playing live some of the songs that were on?
Yes, actually we have two of them.
It's funny because _ _ I'm not so keen on the recorded versions of the day time that came out,
but playing them live, we have just the raw form of the songs, which I prefer.
I prefer the recorded versions of the Chemical Chord 2, which is not out yet.
So it's like, erp.
Has it ever been a point where you've, in making an album,
sat down and done a lot of pre-writing that didn't involve recording and playing things,
where you just sat down and charted out, this is what it's going to be like?
It's just not what you're working on.
It's just not interesting to me to do it.
_ I like the _ _ chance, I like the things.
_ I like just doing the basis, the grid, [Ab] not even a grid because things can go outside the grid,
but just the [N] foundations of something.
I never, I mean, we're not waiting around for a perfect record.
Records are just a summation of ideas or just _ the tracks and the music that we were working on.
I don't know what they're going to sound like in the end, when we start.
_ It's no kind of big plan.
_ Just try this, try this.
A lot of the sounds of the gear that you use has now been reduced to these plug-ins
and computer production suites.
_ I'm curious how you feel about that.
Do you think there's a great advantage to using the hardware? _ _ _
The first thing is, you've got to have a character,
and it's got to have, I think, kind of poetry, as I call it, in the sound.
If you use _ a real Farfisa or a real Vox, the sound is instantly good.
It makes the chords sound good, and it's got a great characteristic.
Try to do this with a MIDI plug-in, you'd be spending hours.
_ [Abm] In fact, I don't think it can be done because it's something_
To me, I'm looking for things that make chords sound good and make the, you know_
It is possible with some digital things, you know, and occasionally live, yes, you have to use something. _
_ But I really don't want to, and that's absolutely forced.
But I'm not a retro person.
I'm not saying that, you know, nothing is good [N] post-19 whatever.
It's just that I listen to it, and I think that this is infinitely better than that.
As an organ, I'd rather have an organ than a piece of software that's trying to be an organ.
Has there ever been a point where you've had a strong desire to just start over
and do something wildly different from stereo?
I mean, to be honest, whatever idea I'm feeling strong about, it gets channeled into Stereolab. _
So, _ not particularly country or whatever.
But I mean, you know, there are always, you know, I have hundreds of ideas which I never write down
or never, you know, think about again.
_ But if it occurs around about just before starting to write a record, then I'll use it.
So, I mean, it's like, I think the Stereolab are a kind of band that can, _ _ you know, be elasticated enough
or be kind of, it can mould things, or the band can be moulded, you know. _ _
Things tend to sound the same to a lot of people, but I think this [Gb] is, _ _ _ _ [G] _ I think that [Bbm] there's many, many varied differences,
but they're very [N] slight differences.
Where would you recommend that somebody start exploring your catalogue? _ _ _ _ _ _ _
I would say Cobra.
Cobra?
Yeah, Cobra and Phases.
_ _ [E] Kind of arbitrarily. _ _
Pang, it could be [F] Pang.
Yeah, I wouldn't put Pang.
Why?
Come on, it's a beautiful record.
_ I wouldn't put it.
[N]
I don't know.
I'd _ _ _ say _ the B-side collection.
I think that the most characteristic record is something like the Rhythm Phrydic Duplosum.
Because, I mean, to me that _ says more about the band than all about,
_ _ it is a collection of all the singles and seven inches and tracks for this thing and that thing.
I mean, that's what I like about doing the band as well.
It's more than just albums. _
Can I, I'd like to ask you about your studio, which you built.
How long ago was that? _ _ _ _ _ _