Early British electronic artists Depeche Mode and Yazoo made records there, in what Gane described as a “small, dark, somber” space, before he and his bandmate and writing partner Laetitia Sadier brought their group to Blackwing nearly three decades ago to record its second album, “Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements.”
That 1993 record — a blend of Krautrock, Muzak, electronic experimentation and pop melodies, with Sadier singing about consciousness and politics in a mix of English and French — would cement Stereolab’s members as innovators relentlessly pushing the boundaries of rock. And what kind of atmosphere did the cloistered studio bring to the mix? “Well, it was a bit gloomy,” Gane said brightly.
A dose of cheekiness was always central to Stereolab’s mission, and “Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements” kick-started its ascent as the band that perhaps best embodied the DIY, artful, anti-mainstream British music scene of the early ’90s. Its combination of minimalism, pre-70s easy listening and cutting-edge studio techniques was simultaneously nostalgic and forward-looking, making the band sound both out-of-time and timeless.
But after a 19-year run that endured the death of multi-instrumentalist and singer Mary Hansen and the end of its core duo’s romantic relationship, the group went on hiatus in 2009. This month, its nearly decade-long slumber came to an end.
“All along, I’ve seen that people were just waiting for us to come back,” Sadier said over ale and salt-and-vinegar chips at a nearby pub. “And I feel really joyful that we can give it again to people, one more time. But it’s a shared enjoyment. I love this music, and I’m so keen to be singing it and performing it again.”
The reunion was stoked by the efforts of the pioneering U.K. electronic label Warp, which bought the rights to the LPs Stereolab released on the major label Elektra in the United States. Warp then began discussions with the band and its longtime manager, Martin Pike, about making the albums freshly available in physical formats — only appropriate for a band that writer Simon Reynolds called “the ultimate record collection rockers,” whose endless list of influences and interests shifted from album to album, even moment to moment.
Seven albums — including the heralded trio of “Mars Audiac Quintet” from 1994, “Emperor Tomato Ketchup” from 1996 and “Dots and Loops” from 1997 — are being reissued with bonus tracks and packaging extras. And the band — which now includes drummer Andy Ramsay, keyboard player Joe Watson and bassist Xavier Muñoz Guimera — is heading out on tour, starting in Europe this month before arriving in the U.S. in July.
Gane, 54, said the band didn’t want to celebrate those albums, exactly, but “give them some sort of way to exist in the modern world, in 2019.”
The British Gane and the French Sadier met in Paris in 1988, when Gane’s previous band, the political indie-guitar four-piece McCarthy, performed there. They became a couple and, after relocating to London, Sadier contributed vocals to McCarthy’s third and final album, “Banking, Violence and the Inner Life Today” in 1990. McCarthy split that same year, and Gane and Sadier formed Stereolab and its own label, Duophonic, to release its records. Both musicians played an array of guitars, organs and synths; Sadier handled lyrics. (“Life on Earth is a bloody hazard, it’s a fact,” she began the 18-minute epic “Jenny Ondioline” in 1993. “The immutable system is so corrupt,” she later continued, before repeating “We got to keep the lift, hope and struggle” again and again.)
The band’s cleverness and facility with both pop culture and political references immediately set them apart. Musician and producer John McEntire first met Stereolab’s members in Chicago in 1993, when his then band Gastr Del Sol opened on its first U.S. tour. In a phone interview he said he was instantly struck by Gane’s “totally encyclopedic knowledge of everything — and that is not exaggeration at all.” He went on to produce four of Stereolab’s albums.
“We were never part of any particular scene,” Pike, still the group’s manager, said in a phone interview. “We had our own label in the U.K. and just did our own thing — which meant we didn’t have to satisfy the British music press.” He noted that Elektra afforded the band complete creative freedom, too: The band would deliver music and artwork, “and it was released, no questions asked.”
At the pub, Sadier discussed how self-determination was central to the band’s aesthetic: “I would go so far as to say we were avoiding going overground. Because, you know, it’s a pain,” said the singer, 50, whose arrival at the church earlier in the day was eased by a pair of Nordic walking poles. (She recently underwent surgery on the meniscus in her right knee: “I carried too much heavy equipment — cables and pedals. It’s a rock ’n’ roll injury,” she said self-mockingly.)
She referenced PJ Harvey, Pulp and the Cranberries — artists who, at one point, were on the same level as Stereolab before attracting a wider audience. “This kind of notoriety is not a particularly good thing,” she added. “You don’t enjoy it anymore. You don’t enjoy what you do.”
Fame, it is clear, was not a priority; keeping up ceaseless exploration was the focus. But it eventually took its toll.
The occasionally fretful Gane, who resembles Thom Yorke’s equally rumpled older brother, and the mostly sanguine Sadier agreed that having a son, Alex, in 1998 didn’t derail their workaholism. Sadier, however, admitted to feeling like she was on a hamster wheel of “writing, recording, touring” and experienced crushing fatigue while touring with an infant. In 2002, Hansen — whose vocal interplay with Sadier became a signature of Stereolab’s sound — was struck and killed by a bus while bicycling in London. Then Gane and Sadier’s relationship came to an end.
Discussing the band’s hiatus, which came after the release of its last full studio album, “Chemical Chords,” the duo revealed vastly differing perspectives on its trajectory.
“I was tired of touring,” Gane said. “But the main reason was, I couldn’t see a way [the music] would develop. And I didn’t have the spontaneity to make it work any more. I felt the next record we made would be bad.”
Sadier’s explanations were more rooted in personal dynamics. “I felt that the ambience in the band was really crappy and very stifling, and I had no enjoyment being around the people in the band,” she said. “There was too much alcohol being consumed. Too much jadedness. Too many miserable people to be doing this.”
Gane disagreed, and the pair had a brief, tense back-and-forth that ended with Sadier recalling how she ended the group’s last show of its pre-hiatus tour “in tears in a bar in Tokyo. I was bawling.”
For a moment, it became easier to see how the tensions that encouraged the band’s explorations and tenacity could also push the group to the brink.
In the nine years since the band’s break, Gane formed a group called Cavern of Anti-Matter with former Stereolab member Joe Dilworth and Holger Zapf. Sadier, who had previously played in the side project Monade, put out four solo albums, sang on Tyler, the Creator’s song “PartyIsntOver/Campfire/Bimmer” and collaborated with Deerhoof.
But during the gap, Stephen Christian, a creative director in Warp’s London offices, said the dormant band’s music was “resonating with a younger generation.” Stereolab “exists in the gap between the experimentation of the underground and the appeal of the wider world of pop music,” he said, citing Pharrell Williams and Tyler, the Creator.
With a renewed crop of fans awaiting its return, is the band apprehensive about putting the show back on the road after a decade?
“What we might lack in a bit of technical proficiency, we’ve always lacked,” Gane said. “We’re going to be more rehearsed than we ever were for any previous tour. We can’t do more than that.”
As for Sadier, she remains as politicized as ever. She still wants to “change the world, big time,” she said. “But now I’m more realistic. I’m still a bit of a Marxist revolutionary: you have to put up a struggle, otherwise you’re going to get [expletive].” Referencing the current moment of societal and international division, and sharply polarized views on everything from climate change to economic inequality, she added, “We’re only going worse and worse and worse down this road. So I’ll still be singing my lyrics with all my heart. Because alas, nothing’s really changed positively.”
Plans beyond October are less clear. When asked if there was new Stereolab music in him, Gane replied: “Don’t know. Maybe. That’s the problem.” He explained, “There’s the music that, as an instigator of the music, I’m interested in doing. That might not sound anything like Stereolab music. But can it become Stereolab music? That’s the question.”
Would Sadier like there to be a new album? Equally true to form, she got to the point.
“What are the hours?” she replied with a coquettish eyebrow.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.