Instant Holograms on Metal Film by Stereolab

The Feature Album this week on 2SER is Instant Holograms on Metal Film, the eleventh record by Stereolab.

Words by Josh Ray

Where to begin? A new Stereolab album in the year 2025. There isn’t much more that needs to be said. But I will say anyway.

Instant Holograms on Metal Film is Stereolab’s 11th album. Having not released any music* since 2010’s Not Music, it’s their first original album rollout on Warp Records, a label known for supporting many artists which were no doubt heavily influenced by Stereolab’s output (Broadcast, Squid, Flying Lotus etc). It’s got 13 songs, altogether falling 20 seconds short of an hour-long runtime. All of these songs have names which will only ever exist on a Stereolab album – ‘Aerial Troubles’, ‘Vermona F Transistor’, ‘Esemplastic Creeping Eruption’ and ‘Electrified Teenybop!’, among others.

The latter-most of these tracks reminds me of the tune that plays when you gain the Super Star boost in Super Mario, where you run for 15-or-so seconds with higher-than-average speed and ability to wipe out any enemy standing in your way. ‘Electrified Teenybop!’, in contrast, lasts a very generous 4 minutes and 15 seconds, and is followed pleasantly by the album’s third single in ‘Transmuted Matter’. This track, with it’s repetitive bassline, spaceship-button-esque synths and tropical guitar licks, reminds me exactly why I started liking Stereolab in the first place. It’s music for a long highway, or, more appropriately, an autobahn, given the obvious Kraftwerk influences.

As with most Stereolab albums, the pleasantness of the sound exists in stark contrast to the undercurrent of social commentary. If you can liken the sound of these songs to the utopian ‘Society If’ photo, it’s lyrics could appropriately be compared to an image of a Ford production line in the early stages of industrialisation. Themes of power, consciousness, love and divinity all find themselves in equal measure on this album’s lyrics sheet, sometimes all on the same song.

One of the many reasons Stereolab gained such a huge following in the 90s was their innovative, space-agey world they built through their sound, lyrics and image. Albums like Dots and Loops sound like they could have come out in any year after its release, and to this day still sounds like a Streamline Moderne vision of the future. Existing Stereolab fans will take joy in knowing that Instant Holograms on Metal Film operates in a similar way, sounding as sharp and groovy as anything they’ve ever released. It is beautiful and fun, and would be best listened to either in a park in spring or a space shuttle in space. If you already like Stereolab, then you’ll probably like this as well. If you don’t, then luckily you’ll be hearing it all this week (and the following) on 2ser.

 

*This is a lie. They have actually released a lot of music – numerous compilations, singles and expanded editions of previously released albums all populate the Warp Records catalog from 2018. But you can see why I’d have to forgo those details until the end of this writeup.