Which reminds me of something I thought the other day... I was listening to Abbey Road, one of the parts I don't like, and thought, "augh, pastiche." Now, I don't know why I associate pastiche not just with the adoption or assumption of a style, but of a number of them, but there you go. I guess I never really learned what pastiche meant. But. Isn't it funny how some terms become terms of disparagement so easily? I really like some examples of pastiche (69 Love Songs is probably the most notable example, but there must be others), and I think part of that is even due to their being pastiched (it's not something I overlook because of other good qualities), but as soon as it's something I don't like, "pastiche" becomes something vile that is partly responsible for the music's failure to please me.

And despite the fact that they generally seem to have some similar sensibility or sound in each case, it seems like each little self-similar passage on Sound-Dust could be the sound that another band employs throughout their entire album, with conventional songwriting added. Take for example the synth smears on "Suggestion Diabolique".

I think this review does well to focus on the songwriting on Sound-Dust. Perhaps it's the case that they've had as well-developed a sense of song structure in the past, at least as of Dots and Loops, but this album seems like the first place where they're really consistent about combining the sort of catchy, poppy drone music that they can write in their sleep with song structures that keep the catchy, poppy drone music interesting over the course of an album. There's nothing wrong with catchy, poppy drone music, but if a song is built out of one thing, and it repeats for two to ten minutes, then if you don't like the song, you're stuck in it until the album moves on (or you do). There are parts here that I don't like, just like on past Stereolab albums, but even when I don't like them they're often part of songs with parts that I do like, and it's consistently kind of surprising how those parts are stuck together. It seems like kind of an idiot's trick to write songs by just cutting together different-sounding drone-pop (as if that were all they're doing here!), but it really is quite effective.

Hmm, after Stereolab having Klucevsek's "Wave Hill" come on sounds very much like a typical rock/pop-music end-of-album thing, where the music is done with unconventional instruments (accordion and violin), and very wistful and beatless.

Uh oh Tom has caught me: I forgot Change on this (caveated, I note) list. Rest assured the record has never been far from my mind and will be my absolute favorite this year. If I can rank them, it wins, without a doubt (and this over the Betas, even, which I am also very keen on).

Oh, what's this? It's gotten very quiet in here. With occasional drones and scratchy violin noises (but very pretty ones). It must be the one for John Cage.

Mixed in with these other discs, the tracks from AAS sound a lot tighter and more like "proper songs" (gag, cough). Well, except for "Like Foxes Through Fences" which just came on. I'm not sure what I disliked at first about this album, but I guess it had something to do with it not sounding enough like the old ones, especially The Golden Band, which has a special sound and a kind of ephemeral, elliptical quality to the songs. The vibes (vibraphone, I mean, not "vibes, maaan") are gone, and it seems like the guitars and other sounds are made to be a bit more trebly, scratchier too. (?) I'm not sure yet how the songs compare. They're more definite and less peripatetic than the other music in my changer, I gues you could say (or maybe you couldn't at all: they depend on much tighter harmonic structure, though), but they do sound something like AAS's old songs.

"Somethin' Else" sounded vibrant and exciting so when "Bangoon" comes on it's a little disappointing: the recording sounds shabbier and the music sounds older, from say '55 rather than '58. But I guess that it's a bonus track, and sure enough, it is, the only one on the album (one of those Rudy Van Gelder series remasters on Blue Note) not to appear on the original album.

It's surprising how much confusion I've engendered by putting in both Stolen Memories and Masses: they sound different enough in style, I think, and Masses even has a lot of other sounds on it (like from the saxes) that Stolen Memories doesn't, but when tracks from either start I'm uncertain which record is playing (maybe due to their avant-garde-soundingness, vague as that is).