Pitchfork's review of Stereolab's Margerine Eclipse sounds reasonably promising:
When the band released an uninspired Instant 0 in the Universe EP in 2003 (coming off their first year without new studio material since they started making records), it looked momentarily as if the train was stopping. Now, the notion seems funny because listening to bright, buoyant tunes like "Le Demeure" or the fantastic opener, "Vonal Declosion", reminds me that they'll probably keep going like this until they're gone.
The aforementioned "Vonal Declosion" rings in the new record with a flash and the trill of the Farfisa, as the bass dances below Sadier's well-worn rhythmic French nothings. What's more, as the band transitions into a section sounding ripped out of Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking" and Mary Tyler Moore Show incidental music at once, supermarket strings enter on the left and reveal Stereolab's true calling for delivering Perfect Pop for Then People. "Cosmic Country Noir" pulls out the classic robotic Wurlitzer drum machine patterns for more antiqua-groove, though the main body of the song is more reminiscent of The Free Design than Kraftwerk.

I'll probably buy it when it comes out (by mail-order from the UK, given the local Warners subsidiary having contracted the Copy Controlled disease).

Posted by: Graham | http://grudnuk.com/ | Sat Jan 17 11:58:58 2004

Might be a case of wait and see... Warners have been pretty erratic on this.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Sat Jan 17 15:00:28 2004

The only things I recall slipping through in recent months were ones which had CD-ROM content; i.e., the same as with EMI.

Anyway, you've now got a credit card, haven't you?

Posted by: Graham | http://grudnuk.com/ | Sun Jan 18 01:10:35 2004

No, still waiting for the outfit I'm trying to get one through to wake up after Xmas...

Posted by: Graham | http://grudnuk.com/ | Sun Jan 18 01:18:40 2004

Anyway, in that case, let's just hope they did the same thing they did with the EP (i.e. put in a useless flash applet that nevertheless makes the CD unable to be crippled. Wierd, that...)

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