Mars Audiac Quintet by Stereolab
Mars Audiac Quintet is an album by the band Stereolab, released in August 1994. Initial releases of the CD came with bonus two-track disk, the double vinyl album came with a 7". During the recording of the album, guitarist Sean O'Hagan left as a full-time member to form his own group, while keyboardist Katharine Gifford was added. "International Colouring Contest" is a tribute to Lucia Pamela, and samples her voice in the intro. Pitchfork Media ranked it the 78th best album of the 1990s.
If <i>Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements</i> flirted with the gleaming optimism of the space age, <i>Mars Audiac Quintet</i> fell in love. The feel got lighter, the sound clearer, the French thicker, the structures more oriented towards pop songs than open-ended grooves (“Ping Pong”, “L’Enfer Des Formes”). Even the politics seemed more direct: “Look at the symbols, they are alive/They move, evolve, and then they die,” Laetitia Sadier sings on “Wow and Flutter”. That she’s paraphrasing the endless clash of Marxist dialectics doesn’t matter as much as how unbothered she sounds while doing it; all that’s missing is her cocktail. Then there’s stuff like “The Stars Our Destination”, which balances kitsch with earnestness and high-minded ideas with an almost naive optimism—a blend the band turned into their signature.
