STEREOLAB: Instant O In The Universe (3×7″, Duophonic Ultra High Frequency Disks D-UHF-D28S, ?)

Ah, look at that cover artwork – fantastic. Fine, fine work by House@Intro, the inspirational force behind all manner of great-looking records. House is graphic designer Julian House, and Intro is the The Intro Partnership, who I’d give several right arms to work for. Even if their website is completely Flash-based, which always narks me.

Loooove the Stereolab typography on the front of this three record set. It’s astounding. Masterful use of positive and negative space to eke the letterforms out of nothing, with all kind of subtle spatial reversals going on. It’s the kind of thing that looks straightforward but that is in fact a mutha to do well. This is a nice little package in general – the weight and bulk of three seven inch singles popped into a little slipcase that gives the whole thing a feel of a mini-epic; a nod to expensive and luscious multi-album box sets rendered at a small scale.

Just one gripe: the sleeves inside which each of the records is housed are printed with a solid shiny black tone, and it’s impossible not to cover them in fingerprints unless one approaches them as one might approach an original Gutenberg bible. Oh, House@Intro, why did you fail us with this one aspect of your work?

STEREOLAB & BRIGITTE FONTAINE/MONADE: Caliméro/Cache Cache (7″, Duophonic Super 45s DS45-25, ?)

Not sure what year it was when this record came out, but I’d hazard a guess that it was something like ’97 or ’98 perhaps. Who knows. Does it matter? Is it important to place records in some kind of grand chronological schema? To me it is, dammit, I love the chronology. This followed that followed this followed that… and so on. It helps me to place the originality and lineage of records into a context, I guess.

Anyhoo, gorgeous white vinyl on this 7″. I really love opaque coloured vinyl a whole lot more than transparent; it tends to look just like you could take a bite right out of it. Like a big round, thin, vinyl cake. I’m not massively keen on the design of the sleeve here, I must admit, but I do like the typeface they’ve used – Cooper Black, is it? I think so. Duophonic Super 45s has always struck me as a slightly odd label – they tend to release this and that whenever they seem to feel like it, with no particularly fixed roster or ‘plan’ behind what they put out there. Not that that’s a bad thing. Just a bit confusing at times.

Monade (as featured on the B-side, you can’t tell this from the picture above) is something to do with Stereolab. I’ve a feeling it’s Laetitia Sadier’s other band. They’re pretty similar, anyway – especially this-period Stereolab when they were in the height of their cutesy French pop-tinged phase. (At this point I feel compelled to whisper that I much, much prefer the more driving early work, as clichéd as it is to say such things…) I don’t know who Brigitte Fontaine is.

As memory serves I purchased this record from the outstanding mail order service that is Norman Records. If you’re any kind of music fan and not aware of them, find them online today and spend tons o’ bucks with them. You won’t regret it.