Stereolab - Cobra And Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky Night
A lot of people associate this album with me because I talk about it so much. And a lot of people don't get it because they listen to it and it's just like "la-di-da-di-da". Lætitia [Sadier] just stayed at my house the other day - she just happened to be going through Atlanta - and we had a talk late at night over a cup of tea about this album. I said when I first heard this album, it was when I realised there was a lot of sonic opportunity out there. A lot of the albums I've mentioned so far have this sort of focus on accidents and starkness, but this album is not that. It's very constructed, and you've got something like 74 minutes of every kind of cool music you could turn a 16 or 17-year-old on to. Everything from Faust to Brazilian music to Charlemagne Palestine - who Tim [Gane] later told me was an influence on my favourite track on this album, 'Blue Milk'. I was telling Lætitia about that track - it's very easy for bands to make something transgressive, but it's very difficult for a band to bottle where things are going and then just flow into somewhere unsettling with it. 'Blue Milk' is mainly known for this upbeat poppy "la-di-da" bit, but then all of a sudden you have this very frightening song, that if I had to compare to something, I'd compare it Suicide - 'Frankie Teardrop', or as Tim told me, 'Strumming Music' by Charlemagne Palestine. I've got like five versions of it. I've got a 20-minute version, I've got a demo that Tim gave me from his home tape collection which is just him and Lætitia playing it and it's totally different, eerie but like a garage rock song. I'm the undisputed world expert on 'Blue Milk'. It's perhaps my favourite song of all time. It really has driven the direction of Deerhunter, every graphic I've ever done, or drawing I've ever made. There's something very non-occidental, non-Western, non-Christian in that music. Almost pagan. Like the witches in Macbeth.