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New Statesman
5 days ago
- Business
- New Statesman
The lost futures of Stereolab
Photo by Joe Dilworth Nikolai Kondratiev was born in Russia in 1892. An influential theorist of the New Economic Policy under Lenin, in the 1920s he pioneered the idea that would define his posthumous reputation. Capitalist economies, he argued, underwent predictable cycles of about 50 years' growth followed by stagnation. In 1938, Kondratiev fell out of favour and was executed under Stalin's Great Purge. But after his death, his theory found acclaim in the West, memorialised as 'supercycles', or the Kondratiev wave. One small ripple from this theoretical legacy came in the summer of 1994, on the fringes of the British Top 40 singles chart. A basic schooling on the Kondratiev wave could be found in the lyrics of 'Ping Pong' by the avant-pop band Stereolab, a catchy, three-minute single sung in French-accented English, and built around sultry electric organ and sparkling, understated guitars. The release peaked at 45, mounting no threat to that week's imperial Wet Wet Wet chart-topper. From the vantage of the mid 2020s, perhaps Nineties guitar bands require their own theory of stagnation and growth. After long absences, this summer sees a new album by Pulp and the live return of Oasis (the latter a group impelled by very different economic theories). At a quieter volume in the public consciousness, we now have a largely unexpected new album by Stereolab, the long-running project of onetime romantic partners Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier. Stereolab burst from the ruins of Eighties indie. Ilford-born Gane – a teenage devotee of experimental bands like Throbbing Gristle – was the guitarist in McCarthy, a badge-wearing socialist outfit whose verbose and accusatory songs included 'We Are All Bourgeois Now' and 'Should the Bible Be Banned'. At a 1988 Paris show, Gane met, and quickly began a relationship with, a McCarthy fan: Lætitia Sadier. Born in 1968, Sadier grew up in the eastern suburbs of Paris, interrupted by long stays in the US following her father's corporate job. Sadier briefly joined McCarthy before the band split in 1990. The pair then moved to south London, signed on to the dole, and plotted an entirely new project. By the Nineties, rock had amassed so much past that would-be musicians could pick a spot in virtually any niche of its history, and burrow there for a whole career. Stereolab's early releases were in thrall to the Seventies Düsseldorf duo Neu! and their propulsive, defiantly minimalist 4/4 beat. A rotating cast of musicians came and went around an unchanging nucleus of Gane, Sadier and the Australian guitarist Mary Hansen, whose bright, volleying harmonies with Sadier were the emotional centre of the band's sound. What set them apart was their politics. Gane wrote – and largely produced – the music, leaving lyrics entirely to Sadier. Delivered in a conversational but strident voice, Sadier sounded like a compelling sociology lecturer suddenly taking flight. On the single 'French Disko', which was performed on late-night TV's The Word, Sadier called for acts of 'rebellious solidarity' before a chorus of 'La Résistance!' But her lyrics tended towards affirmation rather than polemic. There was 'Ping Pong', with its Kondratiev chorus, and the playful 'Wow and Flutter', which does not on first listen sound as though it is questioning the supremacy of the IBM and US imperialism, but somehow pulls it off. In interviews, her political declarations were measured and playful, pondering to Melody Maker in 1993 what exactly to do about 'people like John Major' come the revolution. ('Do we kill them? Do we brainwash them? Do we get them to mop the streets?… That's a hell of a responsibility.') Through punk, the postwar Situationist International – a revolutionary Marxist alliance of artists and intellectuals – for a time held an outsized influence on pop music. You could detect their influence in Stereolab's fusing of anti-capitalist lyrics to the sounds of American consumerism, with their sincere adoption of Sixties bubblegum pop, easy listening and elevator Muzak. In the Eighties and Nineties, leftist bands as varying as the Style Council and the Manic Street Preachers practised entryism, smuggling leftist ideals through catchy pop. That was not Stereolab. 'I would go so far as to say we were avoiding going overground,' Sadier told the New York Times in 2019. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Instead, Stereolab protected their independence – releasing on their own Duophonic imprint – and got better. Between 1996 and 1999, Stereolab came good on the critic Simon Reynolds's declaration of the band as part of the 'post-rock' wave – meaning guitar bands who had been energised by the arrival of hip-hop and dance music. Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Dots and Loops and the sprawling Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, released consecutively, were among the finest alternative albums of the 1990s, coming at the exact moment Britpop ran out of road. Suddenly, this DIY indie project encompassed glitchy German techno, rhythmic Brazilian jazz, sleek and severe 20th-century minimalism and a collagist approach that beat hip-hop samplers at their own game (later, rap producers including J Dilla, Tyler, The Creator, and Pharrell Williams would sample and praise specifically this era of the band). Playful and psychedelic, Stereolab almost resolved political music's central dilemma – that anyone buying the object probably agrees with you already – by flooding their work with what the critic Mark Sinker dubbed 'portals', meaning references to counter-cultural history from filmmaker Stan Brakhage to synth pioneer Wendy Carlos. This couldn't last. Cobra and Phases… received a cruel, attention-seeking 0/10 review from the NME, terming them 'culturally pointless'. It was a harbinger of more than just a casually cruel media culture, proving 2000s indie rock and its skinny-jeans-wearing acolytes would revive just about anything but an interest in politics. And far worse, Stereolab were struck by tragedy. In 2002, Mary Hansen was killed in a traffic accident aged 36. Gane and Sadier separated, and a grief-stricken band lost their zeal. Stereolab's hiatus in 2009 barely caused a ripple. Instant Holograms on Metal Film is the first new Stereolab studio album since 2008's Chemical Chords. After reforming for what appeared to be a slightly awkward, financially necessitated reunion in 2019, something seemed to stick: Stereolab have toured whenever possible since. The first sounds on Instant Holograms are one minute of silvery, arpeggiated synthesizers, introducing the record like some long-lost Eighties television ident. 'Aerial Troubles', the first full-length song on the album, opens with Sadier's declaration – her voice deeper and richer – that 'the numbing is not/it is not working any more'. This is an album uniquely concerned with consumption, greed ('an unfillable hole, insatiable') and 'dying modernity'. Stereolab are back, and they've never sounded so disappointed. On first listen, it surprises that the bubblegum colours Stereolab painted in during the Nineties have been drained to a slightly more parched canvas. On repeat listens, this is to the album's benefit. If Instant Holograms is largely a retread of former Stereolab sounds – and it is – what is different and manages to convince, is its more downcast mood. 'Ego skyscraper, erect and collapsible', mourns Sadier on the mid-tempo, gently exploratory 'Immortal Hands', 'nihilistic and vulgar'. More than any other Stereolab release, Instant Holograms does not leave the subject of life under capitalism. The strange romantic songs or surreal asides that were once part of the band's coalition are this time absent. This could all be a bit much, but what separates Sadier from a bad case of what we might call the 'Ian Browns' (specifically the one-time Stone Roses frontman's dire Covid-sceptic barkings about 'masonic lockdowns' and '5G radiation') is the glacial, cool manner in which she delivers them. It is also the way that the music appears to offer solutions, glimpses of possibility. Take that track: what begins as a downcast plea suddenly fizzes into mutant disco, bursting bright with horns and recalling their most expansive material on the classic Dots and Loops. Ditto the track 'Vermona F Transistor', in which – against a lovely, woozy Tim Gane guitar line – Sadier's phrases begin to suddenly drown in bubbling, electronic vocal effects, rendering them absurd, suggesting their own slipperiness. Stereolab broke out at a time when – even for experimentally minded Marxists – the mood was playful and the forecast optimistic. Putting it mildly, this is not the case today. Instant Holograms will not command much of the same audience as Oasis's return, but the continuing appeal of both is more similar than either would admit: those listening to Stereolab will be hoping to set the clock back to half-past-the-Nineties as much as those in bucket hats at Heaton Park. But on the final song 'If You Remember I Forgot How to Dream Pt 2', Sadier closes with a rebuke to the numbing that featured earlier in the album, emphasising the 'power to choose' and the 'courage to heal'. On Instant Holograms, Stereolab find new ways to explore and analyse the disappointing world around them. Useful lessons, some might say. 'Instant Holograms on Metal Film' by Stereolab is out now on Warp Records [See also: Lorde's Brat moment] Related
Straits Times
08-05-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
The scent of memories: French fragrance house Ormaie debuts at Escentials
PARIS – In 1985, Madam Marie-Lise Jonak, then a 20-year-old model, met a French diver in Paris who worked in Singapore. He swept her off her feet, and she soon found herself en route to the Republic on her first trip out of France, unable to speak English and filled with uncertainty. On May 8, as Ormaie – the luxurious line of fragrances that Madam Jonak co-founded with her son Baptiste Bouygues – launches at multi-label beauty retailer Escentials in Singapore, the city takes on an even deeper meaning. It is a career milestone she could never have imagined as a shy young woman stepping off the plane all those years ago. Over lunch in March with The Straits Times at a brasserie in Paris' dynamic 9th arrondissement, where Ormaie's atelier is located, Madam Jonak reflects on arriving in Singapore and how the drive and dynamism in the city transformed her. Now 59, what struck her the most, she said, was seeing 'many powerful women' pursuing interesting careers and supporting their families, something she said was less visible in the France she grew up in. 'By the time I went back to Paris at 28, I had travelled all over Asia, spoke a second language and was so much more secure. I picked up the phone and called the CEO of a company that I wanted to work at, which was not what anyone did back then,' she said, speaking in French-accented English with no trace of the Singaporean lilt she once had. Her first job back in Paris was in a junior administrative role at the global consumer goods company Colgate-Palmolive. While supporting various product development teams, she discovered she had an acute sense of smell and asked to transition to become a nose, with none of the usual prerequisites and just the confidence she had gained in Singapore. She learnt on the job, eventually working on scents for various brands including Guerlain and Nina Ricci, and scaling the heights of her professions, earning FiFis (The Fragrance Foundation Awards) for her creations before starting Ormaie in 2018. As a family, they lived and breathed fragrances, and for Mr Bouygues, 36, starting a fragrance company was something he was almost sure he would do. He recalled fond childhood memories of staying up late in his mother's laboratory with her colleagues 'because when you create fragrances, you need to try it on people'. 'I was so young and had no hair on my arms, so I was a great human blotter.' Added Mr Bouygues, who started his career in luxury at Louis Vuitton and Givenchy: 'What's perfect when you work with your mother is that you share the same olfactory memories. I can tell her, 'That smells too much like the soap in grandma's house', and she'll know exactly what I'm talking about.' At the heart of Ormaie are these personal memories of the founders distilled into 12 gender-free scents, ranging from floral to woody. There are also some that do not fall into clear categories, but have poetic qualities like 'the smell of a French classroom' in Papier Carbone. The rose-patchouli blend of Yvonne pays tribute to Mr Bouygues' grandmother. Le Passant, a smoky lavender, evokes the longing for his father, who was often away for work. The scent 28° – a composition of jasmine, tuberose and orange blossom – brings to mind the summers in Asia and the South of France. And 18-12, named after Madam Jonak's birthdate, captures youth with a vibrant scent of sweet-smelling roses, almonds and cherries. With a nostalgic twinkle in her eye, she described the patchouli-scented sarong she once wrapped around her son while living in Pattani, Thailand, now loaded in the candle Sarong. Ormaie fragrance 18-12, named after founder Marie-Lise Jonak's birthdate, captures youth with a vibrant scent of sweet-smelling roses, almonds and cherries. PHOTO: ORMAIE Each fragrance is housed in a bottle that has been faceted 12 times to resemble a sundial, symbolising the long process of perfume creation. The caps have been sculptured from responsibly sourced beech wood in France into mid-century modern shapes, making each bottle exquisite and a work of art. Its best-selling scent is Tableau Parisien, inspired by the elegant nonchalance of Parisian women and a former girlfriend of Mr Bouygues. 'The first time I met her, she completely ignored me,' he recalled. Parisian vignettes depicted in the works of French-Swiss film-maker Jean-Luc Godard, American novelist Ernest Hemingway and French poet Charles Baudelaire, just a small part of Mr Bouygues' deep repository of artistic references, also helped him paint this special scent profile of Paris he wanted to portray. 'I translated the essence of it and (my mother) made something exceptional. It has a femininity from the tuberose and spice from cloves and cinnamon – which to me is the nonchalance – and a beautiful tobacco that brings elegance,' said Mr Bouygues. Ormaie's best-selling scent Tableau Parisien. PHOTO: ORMAIE Tableau Parisien is also noteworthy because the founders say that with its special mix of sensual and spicy notes, they have created a unique accord, or a new fragrance profile, that will influence future scents in the industry. Ormaie's fragrance collection, with prices ranging from $165 to $540, is available at Escentials stores in Paragon and Ion Orchard, as well as on Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
