Contrasts and Classic Experimentation in Stereolab’s First Album in 15 Years
Label: Duophonic UHF Disks / Warp
Released: May 22, 2025
By Krista Spies
Stereolab, a French-English avant-pop band, has just released Instant Holograms On Metal Film, the group’s first album in 15 years. Known for their experimentation and evolution over their 25-year career (with a 10-year hiatus in the middle), they have sustained this reputation in this new full-length LP that combines sounds that you could imagine in outer space with lines of depth and insight.
“Mystical Plosives” gives Instant Holograms On Metal Film its introduction with a celestial, futuristic instrumentation. Just under a minute, its hypnotic background repetition brings some synth notes to the foreground before suddenly stopping into “Aerial Troubles.” Stereolab released this second track as the first single in anticipation of the album as a whole. It’s low piano beginning contrasts with the otherworldly first song as a heavy drop in another direction. Lætitia Sadier comes in with vocals singing, “The numbing is not working anymore,” with backing voices from Xavi Muñoz. Though a disconcerting start to the record, “Aerial Troubles” continues with a more buoyant electronics and chilling lyrics that reminds one of whatever creepy sci-fi short story you read in high school.
Third track “Melodie Is A Wound” sounds like a sunny day with the upbeat guitar strums and warm vocal tones by Sadier. Following the trend of “Aerial Troubles,” the lyrics involve complex and upsetting ideas — Sadier ends the song with the line, “Truthfulness has fallen in desuetude.” Though over seven minutes long, experimental and almost cheerful instrumentals make up the majority of this tune rather than those disquieting lyrics. Thus, Stereolab introduces an opposition between sound and word.
Throughout Instant Holograms On Metal Film, Stereolab incorporates two solely-instrumental tracks, including, of course, “Mystical Plosives.” Seventh song “Electrified Teenybop!” gives a quick-paced, computerized inception, then brings in dynamic warbling tones. Up-and-down notes follow, and the whole piece seems to take you on a meditative, agile journey through the science fiction future that only the 1980’s could imagine.
The final single that the band released before the full album was “Transmuted Matter,” Sadier’s vocals are kindly striking in this track because of their layering, providing casual yet robut harmonies. “Fully human, fully divine, entwined” are the lines that both begin and end the song, and they fit the intertwining, humble-yet-angelic singing. In previous songs on this record, Stereolab has already demonstrated how experimental their instrumentation can be. On this “Transmuted Matter,” one can hear that powerful experimentation through the patterns of the vocals, as well.
This new work involves a duo of tracks named “If You Remember I Forgot How To Dream,” Parts 1 and 2. Part 1 begins with lines in French that translate to “I belong to the earth. I say no to war,” and later also bringing in the French for “I don’t own [the earth].” The lyrics that are in English are less clear, such as the phrases, “Permanent revolution of which implications are yet beyond our grasp.” They return to that image of entwining with, “It is because I am you. It’s because you are me, eternally entwined, mirage of separateness, meeting with a stranger, a lost part of myself.” A set of horns introduce the ending lyrics, “Two halves of one, union, compound.” This mesh of light, jazzy instrumentals clash in a charismatic way with the sharp, poetic words. “If You Remember I Forgot How To Dream Pt. 2” finishes the entirety of Instant Hologarms On Metal Film with, of course, a synthy track that brings in subdued electric guitar and clean piano notes. Stereolab leaves the listener with the repetition of lyrics and melody that end abruptly, perhaps disappearing from you, stunned, with much reflection to do.