Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements (reissue) vinyl

Widely regarded as one of Stereolab's best albums, the deadpan title of their second album conveys, to an extent, what to expect. The track 'Pack Yr Romantic Mind' lives and dies on Tim Gane's noise rock bursts, which provide stunning contrast to Laetitia Sadier dream pop vocals. Gane and Sadier, as a songwriting duo, come from very different styles and ideas but it's the confluence of these that is the beating heart of Stereolab and why they're still revered more than 30 years on from when they released it. Another scorcher here to look out for is 'Jenny Ondioline', where static noise and thick, foggy post-rock ambiance gives way to a motorik beat that's Neu! and Can-level transcendental, as it whisks you into another realm, before coming back to a very present, belligerently shreddy distorted guitar outro. This is a band that pandered to no one's expectations but their own and let raw emotion guide them.