Stereolab - Cybele's Reverie
What to do when you've done everything, read everything, drank everything, ate everything?
Album: Emperor Tomato Ketchup [4th album]
Recorded: London, England & Chicago, Illinois
Genre: Art Pop, Indietronica
Album Release: March 18th 1996
Single Release: February 19th 1996 [lead single]
Length: 4:40
Producer: Stereolab & Paul Tipler
Vocalist: Laetitia Sadler [age 28]
Label: Duophonic Records [UK - owned by Stereolab] & Elektra Records [USA]
Music Video
Live on Jools Holland in 1996
Charts, Streams & Sales
Spotify: 4,300,000 +
YouTube Music: 160,000 +
John Peel's Festive 50 1996: #11
Pitchfork's Best Albums of the 90's: #51
Spin Magazine's Best Albums of the 90's: #46
Credits & Gear
Details
- Stereolab released 'Cybele's Reverie' as a four track EP in 1996.
- The song is entirely in French.
- The band name Stereolab nods towards the experimental nature of the groop by indicating a laboratory of sound.
- Cybele is the Greek goddess of motherhood and the word 'reverie' is
defined as the state of being lost in ones thoughts such as when
daydreaming. So it stands to reason that the song refers to daydreaming about motherhood, which is to say a womans daydream.
- The song is about remembering what it was like in childhood, when the
world was a place full of possibility, as opposed to the mundanity and
repetitiveness that creep in with adulthood. Laetitia Sadler has said
that it's is about her swinging in her garden when she was a girl and simply enjoying the innocence of childhood, like a womans remembrance of her youth.
- The album 'Emperor Tomato Ketchup' takes its name from a Japanese art
film from 1970. It's ostensibly about a society where children overthrow
adults to rule according to their own wants and whims. When taken in
combination with the politically-charged lyrics found in their work, it feels like Stereolab
were comparing contemporary English and French societies with the one
in the film. Which is to say their leaders did as they felt with no
regard for the good of the common people.
- 'Emperor Tomato Ketchup' was the first Stereolab album to be made using loops. Their earlier work was more focused on drones and guitar.
- Two of Stereolabs members, singer Laetitia Sadler and guitarist Tim Gane, previously played together as a part of the far left indie band McCarthy. Sadler and Gane were in a romantic relationship and have a child together.
- Radical left wing politics, the technological cutting edge, philosophy
and pop pastiche all combined to make Stereolab the unique, eclectic mix
that it is. The band combine styles such as drone, jazz, pop and bossa
nova with production techniques used in hip hop and electronica to
create a distinctly Anglo-French metropolitan sound that is reminiscent
of the past but firmly on the front line of nineties indie music.
- "I don't think any record can change the world but it can be an element in a chain. It's a link" (Laetitia Sadler talking to Billboard in 1999)
Artwork
