Stereolab is very different from either of those projects. Did you suddenly become drawn to a new set of influences?

Well, in the early and mid-'80s I was a big fan of Krautrock music - like Faust, Neu! and Can. There was a great shop where I lived in L.A. called Recommended Records. They had The Residents and everything! When McCarthy split I was exhausted. I'd been in two bands, and I didn't want to do "just another band." I felt there had to be a reason. It was about a year before I began to think of something that was new to my ears. I started going back and listening to some of this old stuff that moved me. In a sense I was looking for a way of combining the experimental with the commercial. I wanted to do something new and different with music. The idea was a combination of naïve pop melodies melded with very simple rock minimalism. When we started, that early stuff did sound quite different. It played to the proficiencies of the band, which was not very "musical," in a sense. None of us were great musicians, especially in the beginning, so it wasn't a technical thing. Our innovation was to strip everything back.

cf: when we hear stereolab we know it — it doesn’t sound derivative enough of anything to be mistaken for it. who do you consider your influences?
tim: we’re pretty derivative actually it’s just that the groups we rip off are too obscure (see list of fave groups). we just like certain sounds which we couldn’t get around if we tried. we’re trapped by pop music pretensions. I like the name farfisa.
[...]
records stereolab cannot live without:
silver apples (first LP) and contact (2nd LP)
suicide (1st LP)
velvets (1st and 2nd)
neu (1st and 2nd)
faust (all LPs)
can (early LPs)
pavement (LP & 7″s & 10″s)
modern lovers (1st LP & early bootlegs)
half japanese million LPs
pere ubu (early)
nag, na g, nag
cabaret voltaire
electric eels (agitated 7″)
most importantly, ’60s and early ’70s beach boys

Few bands weaved in such a wide range of influences as Stereolab, whom Reynolds called ‘the ultimate record collection rockers’. He wrote that they ‘jumbled things up with a ‘musaic’ that tiles together various strands of retro-cool: Krautrock, Moog music and EZ listening, Françoise Hardy-style French pop of the sixties, lite jazz, the scores to Czech animation and more’ with the ‘resulting unlikely fusions [being] signposted by titles like John Cage Bubblegum and Avant-Garde M.O.R.’ Whilst there was little in Stereolab’s output that sounded completely unprecedented, their engagement with a different, broader set of musical and other reference points to their contemporaries made them one of the most distinctive groups of their generation.
[...]
Gane met Lætitia Sadier at a McCarthy gig in Paris, and they soon fell in love. Sadier provided vocals for their final few releases, and became lead singer of Stereolab after McCarthy split in 1990. Taking their name from a division of Vanguard Records which demonstrated hi-fi effects, they shared the modernist sensibilities of post-punk predecessors such as Cabaret Voltaire, Gang of Four or The Pop Group, but had a very different intellectual and aesthetic outlook. They used vintage electronic instruments – Farfisa and Vox organs, and Moog synthesizers – with motorik beats influenced by 1970s German groups Neu and Faust. Their lyrics, sung in English or French, often referenced radical politics or avant-garde art, particularly the Surrealist and Situationist movements which sought to combine the two.

Stereolab released countless singles, EPs, and full-lengths during the 1990s, but Emperor Tomato Ketchup remains their most definitive and recommended statement. For a group that reveled in resurrecting Continental obscurity, from Neu! to Krzysztof Komeda, Emperor Tomato Ketchup sounded wholly futuristic and alien. Producers Jim O'Rourke and John McEntire perfected their craft, as each song gurgles and grooves in minutia. It's a sound so unique that tracking its influence to date ends at Timbaland and the Neptunes. In addition, the bold, gaudy album cover stands as one of the best of the decade. For a band like Stereolab, this matters immensely. --Brent DiCrescenzo