Customer Reviews

Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements

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3 star:		(1)
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Someday rock fans will look back on 1993 and shake their heads in wonder. Over the course of just a few months during that spring, what I and many others feel are Stereolab's two finest albums were released: "The Groop Played 'Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music'" and this one. Astonishingly, Stereolab rush-recorded "Transient Random Noise Bursts with Announcements" in a matter of weeks, under pressure from their label, Elektra, who wanted to put out their U.S. debut ASAP. No amount of superlatives will prepare you for this masterpiece: a true ALBUM, one that demands the listener follow it all the way through, like a great novel you can't put down. It's an album of many moods, of soaring chants and harmonies, with inscrutable lyrics, beeps, scratches and pops layered on top of one another, and synthesizers brimming with soul. It's trite and perhaps useless to summarize it as the "Pet Sounds" for the 1990s, but I just did.

I bought this after reading an article in "Record Collector" (UK) in which it was described as a classic. As the group (groop!) sounded fascinating I took a chance on it. Well, now I've got all their albums, haven't I! This, however, is the one I'd keep if I could have only one. It's their most challenging and daring CD.

Since this album, slowly but surely, Tim Gane has become infatuated with Brazilian music (if I hear another song full of 'ba de daps' I'll probably throw up). Here, the drone aspects (Velvets and, apparently, Neu) were more dominant. 'Jenny Ondioline' is fantastic and my favourite Stereolab track.

The band has gone past this phase and will not return. That's fair enough. I've still got this CD, though, and they're not getting it back!

Oh, by the way, I saw them live recently and I think I'm in love with Laetitia Sadier!

Though the groop has had a remarkably consistent recording career, this is definately their best. See, most Stereolab albums have 2 or 3 songs (if not more) that range from merely ok to unworthy, but only "Pause" from this album could be in that category, and even then it works on one occasion very well. It closes the first half of the album off as a kind of breather for the 18-minute extravaganza of "Jenny Ondioline," one of Stereolab's greatest achievements. All the other tracks on the album are great, though, and a few ("Tone Burst", "Pack Yr Romantic Mind", "I'm Going Out of My Way") are classics.

Stereolab wouldn't make another album like this, probably because it simply was the culmination of their early phase. They couldn't have added anything to this in future releases, so smartly the band moved closer to pop on "Mars Audiac Quintet". Still, "Transient Random Noise bursts With Announcements" remains Stereolab's finest album statement, and one of the most important albums of the '90s.

This was Stereolab at its peak. A synthesis of sexy 60's pop culture noise, Neu-esque drone rock, and Jean Jacques Perrey's space age pop, with a 90's indie rock bend. This cd was my intro to stereolab in 1993 and it is their most memorable and rewarding in the end.
"Tone Burst" is a perfect example of a kind of cheeky 60's french pop thing with its droney vintage analog bleeps and Laetitia Sadier's sexy vocals gliding over the background in a manner that even touches upon "The Gift" by the VU. " Pack Yr Romantic mind" has that bossa thing going on for the first time in Stereolab's sound. "Im going out of my way" is an upbeat 60's rave up that ends with this cool experimental analog noise. "Jenny ondioline" is like a homage to NEU! clocking around 17 minutes of Sonic Youth-y, shoegazer-ish drone rock. If you can find it, there is a limited edition single for Jenny Ondioline that has a 3:51 edit of Jenny O and 3 rockin B-sides, most notably "French Disko", which later appeared in another version on Switched on Vol 2 on Drag City Records.
Any way you look at it this period of Sterolab was my favorite, and this cd is a great introduction to Sterolab's genius. It may even be the best, most consistent snapshot we'll ever see from Stereolab.

Heard alot about this great band, but never dove into them until I got this record. It's the perfect combination between Sonic Youth-style alternative rock and any electronics-lead groove band high on the keyboards. It shifts between My Bloody Valentine-esque emotional oubursts like "Tone Burst" and "Lock Groove Lullaby" and "Our Trinitone Blast", amazing complex noisy epics ("Jenny Ondioline", an 18 minute plus classic), slightly poppy beuats ("Pack Yr. Romatic Mind" is a beautiful French-flavored samba, "I'm Going Out Of My Way" is peppy and catchy in the more accessible Stereolab fashion) and various experiments between repetitive Kraftwerk-style krautrock ("Analogue Rock") and emotive drifters with a a transcendental Brian Eno minimalist touch ("Pause"). But forget all that pretentious mumbo jumbo I just said. Simply put, this is a great record; Stereolab are one of those bands that can be both pop catchy/radio friendly and experimentally quirky, which often works against them cause their lush pop sounds are often too weird for the masses. I don't think they've ever gotten above underground cult status, and now they're devoted totally to being experimental. But nevermind that. With spring upon us now and summer on the way, this is an awesome record to play on those existential road trips and chill hangout sessions.

I heard this album on its release and was slow to take to it due to the fact it's a departure from the sunny moogy pop of their earliest stuff. I wondered at it, at the odd sleeve and at the spiky and angular sounds. To this day I still wonder at it but its allure grew and continues to grow. It is the one Stereolab album that could be called "noisy" which is a style they do so very well. Most striking are the changes in mood between tracks - "Golden Ball" is a dark, brooding nightmare and "Pack Yr Romantic Mind" is bright and breezy. "Analogue Rock" is pure krautrock-inspired genius and "Our Trinitone Blast" is - well, God knows what it is - an experiment, I suppose, but, like everything else on this disc, a very successful one. The album's centerpiece is, of course, the thrilling 18-plus minutes of "Jenny Ondioline" - less a song than a ride you will enjoy taking over and over and over as it pulses and surges along. They changed directions a couple of times after releasing this gem before settling on a jazzier and less noisy sound, which is of course disappointing, if only from the standpoint that the sound is more one-dimensional these days. On this, however, their major-label debut, they pushed in many directions, tried new and different things, and made a good old-fashioned racket for the one and only time. I continue to be awed by this disc; if only other bands could be as uncompromising and brilliant on their big label debuts!

THIS is the album I used to play before going out at night. Because of rock, noise, pop, and bossa. The neighbours wanted to kill me everytime "Our triniton blast" ended. And I'd wait all night until "Jenny Ondioline" fades out.
I think this is the one which defines best their style. Absolutely classic.

This is my favorite stereolab album, 'Emporer Tomato Ketchup's a close second.

It's so energetic-- also you get a great feel for what they're like live. Because they tend to make concept albums, the raw visceral impact of their chemistry together is sometimes muted for the sake of aesthetics. Don't get them pegged for eggheads, though; they rock the mothereffing house down.

I've been to their live shows and watch out! They are as noisy as Sonic Youth with huge freakin amps pumping out distorted guitars and old analog synths stuttering out tunes that sound like construction work.

Jenny Ondioline on this album is the closest thing to that you're gonna find on a record.

The first track is excellent. 'Pack Yr Romantic Mind' is a sophisticated pop gem ala Jacques Brel.

If you like other Stereolab albums, or sort of psychedelic Britpop, give Stereolab some thought. They have that oldskool krautrock strain (have you ever heard Neu?) leavened with a dose of Spacemen3 psychedelica. They're excellent. :)

Lets get rocking boys and girls! Transient Random Noise-Bursts With Announcements is a really surprising album-even many years later. It is a sonic epic of repetitious guitar/vocal assault...in the best possible way! "Tone Burst" is just a taste of the future until "Our Triniton Blast" takes over your ears. The multi-guitar action is pretty powerful here...with Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hanson's cosmic harmonizing chiming in blasts of beautiful sound. "Pack Yr Romantic Mind" is a haunting and sexy song... with Sadier crooning "The greater is the beauty, the profounder is this thing:significant of the forbidden, transgressed in eroticism." Hello?! Nobody has such a grasp on lyrics that reek of erotic intellectualism. But the biggest rock for your dollar is "Golden Ball," which begins with a twangy guitar and a totally synthesized-out voice, and then slowly speeds into a droning, loud, festering guitar epic. It is during this song that I realized how great Stereolab was at pushing music into new directions. On this album they have their pretty basic line-up of dual voices, moog, keyboards, dual-guitar, bass, and drums. But every song keeps you hanging that extra second, pushes the volume closer to dangerous levels, and makes you want to drive very fast. Its that perfect formula of geek rock+speed metal+lounge music that really helps this record endure as one of my alltime favs. Stereolab has been great ever since, but I must say that I like their early noisy rock records the best. Their sound was way out of nowhere and what a treat that is every now and then!!

This album makes no sense... Squeals of guitar fighting against soothing pop melodies, revolutionary-socialist lyrics filtered through "bah-bah" backing vocals, long sections of drone-rawk fragmented by pure-pop bliss. The more time you spend trying to understand the strange animal known as "Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements," the more you will fall in love with it. One of the few indespensible albums released in the 1990's. P.S. If you don't believe in Paradise, just listen to the eighteen-minute epic, "Jenny Ondioline."