Stereolab

Aerial Troubles

Stereolab – Aerial Troubles

I’ve been on the hunt for a replacement for Spotify for quite a while. They’re just a shitty company that pays the artists next to nothing while they fund highly objectionable things with their billions. Not to mention all of the annoying things about the app that have always irked me. The algorithm, the preference given to playlists and shuffle, and just little things that I feel like an app built for music people would get right, but Spotify gets it wrong.

Back in the summer I downloaded Tidal, Qobuz, my phone is an Android so it comes pre-loaded with YouTube Music, and gave them all a test run with whatever free trial they offered. I imported my Spotify library and ran them through their paces. Tidal was the worst of the three. It crashed all the time and the layout was not intuitive. Qobuz was better, though it also crashed a couple of times during my commute. Being able to listen to music on my drive is kind of the whole point. But the sound quality was great and they pay artists the most of all of the streaming platforms. YouTube Music is ok, serviceable, but I don’t know.

Stereolab’s new album had recently come out when I was doing this little experiment. I used this song, Aerial Troubles, to compare how each of the apps sounded. Qobuz won hands down. I started in Spotify then tried Qobuz and it was so much better that I went back to Spotify and made sure that I had set it to play at the highest quality setting. I then tried out the Qobuz download feature at the highest quality and listened to it offline (no crashing issues that way). When Tidal first came out the buzz was all about the audio quality. It’s better than Spotify but I also read something about a shady investor or two and the frequent crashing is just unworkable. Maybe all of the apps work better on an iPhone but since I don’t have one, that’s a moot point. It’s also why I didn’t really consider Apple Music.

Anyway, I would be happy to hear if you’re using something besides Spotify and love it. Try listening to this song and see how it sounds in comparison.

Miss Modular

Stereolab – Miss Modular

For those wondering, my baking experiment was not a success. You can eat it but it didn’t rise enough and the bottom burned. Oh well.

I also went to the store, changed sheets on a couple of beds, made dinner, and fetched my daughter from college. Tomorrow will be a day spent playing chauffeur.

The Noise of Carpet

http://youtu.be/8qisn5damOI

Stereolab – The Noise of Carpet

Another unmarked tape. This time it was in a soft plastic case with a small picture of Ralph Fiennes from the movie Strange Days taped onto the cover. I thought at first that it must have been a tape with the Strange Days soundtrack on one side but no. Chances are there’s another tape floating around with that on it and I just mixed up the boxes. After all, it hardly matters when there’s nothing written on the box.

I am pretty sure this tape comes from summer 1996 since a bunch of the songs were on albums released that year but it doesn’t have any songs from the Luscious Jackson release later that year so it only makes sense that I made this compilation before that came out.

1996 would put it at a time when I was living up in Maine, trying to save up money for my next move (which wound up being graduate school in Wales a year later). I worked at an insurance company, very boring work, and I didn’t have a lot in common with most of my co-workers. I had bought my first car to get back and forth to the job. It was the most bare bones model they had. It didn’t come with a stereo, not even an antenna, just holes for where the equipment could go if you paid for the upgrade. I figured a car company stereo was probably pretty shitty anyway and I would just go to a local car stereo store and set myself up.

Well, I dropped a huge chunk of change on the stereo at the local place. I got a six-CD changer installed in the trunk, which was controlled by the unit in the car that had a tape deck as well, and a detachable faceplate. This was the height of sophistication in car stereos at the time. I really liked the detachable faceplate feature because I tried to go down to New York, Philadelphia, and DC as often as possible to visit friends and go to shows. So popping off the faceplate made my otherwise very basic car look like it had already been stripped down and not worth breaking into. At least that’s what I told myself and, whether the lack of a noticeable stereo had anything to do with it or not, my car was left alone.

The drive from where I lived in Maine to New York is at least six hours, more if you stop along the way or hit traffic. Usually I would load up the disc changer with six discs that would help kill all that time. However, once you get right down into the heavy traffic area, you can’t be fiddling with the stereo and I would have already burned through all six discs on the way down. I needed a tape that was fast paced to match that last stretch of the drive. I’ve found that the key to driving in cities is to drive as the locals do. This means it’s usually a lot faster and more aggressive than you might otherwise be comfortable doing. Add in unfamiliar territory, frequent lane switches, pothole-ridden pavement, construction detours, and that’s just on the BQE. I made this tape for just those kind of drives.

Side A
Wrong – Everything But the Girl
Shu Zulu Za – Poi Dog Pondering
City Song – Luscious Jackson
Spark Plug – Stereolab
The Noise of Carpet – Stereolab
Stutter – Elastica
Surprise – Luscious Jackson
Waking Up – Elastica
Diamonds and Buttermilk (Matt Warren remix) – Poi Dog Pondering
Big Deal – Everything But the Girl
Flipside – Everything But the Girl
The Chain – Poi Dog Pondering

Side B
Carnival – The Cardigans
Here – Luscious Jackson
Hard Sometimes (M-Theory remix) – Poi Dog Pondering
Before Today – Everything But the Girl
Percolator – Stereolab
Cybele’s Reverie – Stereolab
Wrong (Todd Terry remix edit) – Everything But the Girl
God’s Gallipoli (Arqueen remix) – Poi Dog Pondering
Platetectonic – Poi Dog Pondering
Complicated (Berlin remix) – Poi Dog Pondering
Rise and Shine – The Cardigans
Zap Disco (House-O-Magic mix) – Poi Dog Pondering