Multi instrumental and multi lingual…multi storied, considering the different styles lobbed into the mix here…
Stereo Total deliver a career retrospective of intensely European quirkiness. And in the grand tradition of old style wackiness this is most definitely of its source rather than the more globalised music industry and product we have these days. A good thing? By and large – aye. It’s a refreshing change from listening to the latest Goth offering or Indy extravaganza that frankly could have come from Luton or Luxembourg. This is mainland Europe at its most, ehm, European?
Across the piece this album has ‘place’. If I was a wine-imbibing tosser I’d say it has terroir. I am a wine-imbibing tosser – it has terroir.
Available in roughly 400 different formats the double album addresses their twenty year existence with admirable thoroughness and delivers twenty eight tracks including a new ‘Blow Up Mix’ of ‘Everybody In The Discotheque’. A cover of Msr Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ romps in by track three and if you weren’t sure the angle they take you soon are. Delightfully leftfield whilst still being respectful of the original’s greatness. Some proper, scratchy garage guitar mixed into the playful hoppy about-ness. It’s not twee or too arch that’s for sure. Fine line.
And that’s the line being tip-toed along all the way through. Just when you think we’re drifting into, “Hmmm…this could definitely be an end of Eurotrash song with Antoine de Caunes sporting comedy eyebrows and rubber-lipped blondes bouncing beach balls on their heads…”, things are rescued by some real grit. Or in the case of the ‘Discotheque’ remix, some grit and Kraftwerk-esque computer vocals. Hell, why not? It shouldn’t work but in its own insane way it does.
If all this sounds a bit hipsterish…well, in some senses that wouldn’t be wrong. I’ve definitely seen a picture of one half of the duo, Brezel Göring [alongside Françoise Cactus] with a distinctly square looking guitar – always a warning sign, but hey, they’ve been at it since 1993 so I think they get away with being ahead of the curve. The curve being Rise of the Idiots, Hoxton style.
There’s no doubting it’s damned accomplished stuff, whatever seam they’re mining. ‘Wir Tanzen Im 4-Eck’ is a very decent slab of old school bleepy tech-house. With some hectoring. A dub of this, seriously extended – it is only two minutes long (they clearly enjoy brevity) – would work well even today on a big system at 4am in a sweatbox.
As you’d expect that’s swiftly followed by Hawaiian guitars and mouth organs. This pair are either a booking agent’s ultimate nightmare or a dream. If he did it on the strength of the sixty second, raucous cover of Salt and Pepa – featured here – he’d certainly get a surprise come stage time.
As pretty much every track delivers a surprise to me. Of the bewitched and bewildered variety. But always with deep-rooted glee and admiration at its core. Anyone who can recreate the truly marvellous ‘Heaven Is In The Back Seat Of My Cadillac’ by Hot Chocolate and the late and recently lamented Errol Brown in a lounge style and still make it a thing of beauty definitely has something going on. Bands like this create their own pigeonholes. And then burn them down and fly off somewhere else to cause trouble.
You kinda do need this in your life. The box of frogs I keep on hand as ultimate arbiters of quality look on askance and aghast at all this carry on. Listen to the frogs. They do not lie.