RS Which do you think are the main guidelines of ‘Dots and Loops’?
Laetitia: I think this album is less angular. Experimentations got to their goal a little better than on the other records. The record is less abstract, people are more familiar with our sound.

RS Do you have your own rules to make an album? And do you know that there’s an academic élite that’s interested in Stereolab?
L: I think we’re trying to "deplace" the music into somewhere else and on this record it does achieve. We don’t conceptualize the whole thing. We take things out of their context and put them in a twisted way and turn them into something new. It’s true, there’s much of that philosophy going on. I didn’t know we were taken seriously by the teaching élites. Our ideas are intuitive and spontaneous. I’m sure I would learn a lot from your teacher or even from you about what ve’ve done.

RS Is Stereolab nostalgic?
L: I don’t think this new album is nostalgic. There are lots of influences from over the years, but the final result is not nostalgic at all. It’s a result of the present, maybe of the future, because tomorrow is already here.

RS What’s your definition of ‘music’?
Tim: To me it’s a kind of juxtaposition, a kind of collage of things. We have so many influences which we try to use in unusual ways. We don’t try to find original music, but to find an equal music through the combination of original ideas. It just comes from the fact that we listen to a lot of different records…

RS Such as?
T: 3000 different records
L: Brazilian, drum’n’bass, Scott Walker
T: A lot if Italian 60’s -70’s soundtracks, French music, modern electronic music, dance music, modern German stuff.

RS Do you think that Stereolab can be considered an archetype?
T: I don’t want to claim there’s an archetype...
L: In a way, maybe we kinda sound unique, then maybe… I mean, I don’t know if you’re an archetype just because you do something that is not really done.
T: I think some big bands quite like us because we try to make something different. I don’t think many bands sound like us, but they may be influenced by some ideas that we have… mixing pop music, electronics, try to find unusual music outside of the mainstream… I think that one of the reasons why the music is so interesting is because it is obscure.

RS What can you tell me about Sean O’Hagan of the High Llamas?
L: He collaborates with us, he writes the string and the brass arrangements. He’s very enthusiastic, he’s a very good person to have around, he’s got many ideas. He brings new fresh things.
T: What bound us with Sean was the same love for the Beach Boys, even if it shows more in his work than in ours, and we both love Italian soundtracks.

RS What do you think is the general mood of the new album?
L: I used to know that, but I really don’t know anymore
T: We don’t try to make a record that works in any accettable or sensible way. The idea of kind of experimental films. It sounds like a soundtrack. In the end, you can’t keep to that, but it’s a starting point. On this record we try to make a record which changes when you listen to it.

RS What is ‘repetition’ according to Stereolab?
L: Creating new things and new patterns.

RS And what does ‘lo-fi’ mean to you?
T: There’s a lot of density in the sound, which is overlayered, with many things squashed over. The contradiction is that there is more space in the sound, but the sound is more detailed, there are more things going on underneath. I don’t think what we do now is particularly lo-fi.
L: Some people said we are easy-listening. We called the sound of one of our records easy-listening. It’s very lazy to just see it written somewhere. It’s a bit more complex than that.

RS Does the expression ‘alternative music’ make sense to you?
L: Less and less actually, because the question is: alternative to what? There’s more and more alternative labels, since Nirvana have made it into the mainstream. The aim now is to make it into the mainstream, but it’s become increasingly more fragmented. There are bands that are huge but I’ve never heard about them and I’ve never heard them, because they’re just in a different circuit. It is changing, and alternative means less and less.

RS Would you like to write a piece of music for a movie soundtrack? If so, what kind of movie?
L: A Godard film, or Bunuel, or Truffaut, but a movie that he would be making now, not any in the past.
T: I liked Mario Bova very much, or Dario Argento. Bova’s films are not about anything specific.

RS What’s Stereolab to mainstream?
T: The family dog. A goldfish.

RS Do you know what’s in the charts right now?
T: We like Mouse on Mars, the High Llamas. I don’t know what’s on the charts. I never watch MTV. I listen to more modern music than past music. It’s music that I see live, it’s more active.

RS Which recent movie would you recommend?
T: ‘Lost Highway’ by David Lynch. But this year I can’t think of anything. I like experimental films. Anyway, we’ve never been asked to write a soundtrack. If someone asked me, I’d like to do it. Hopefully a very bad film. I don’t like writing soundtracks for good films.

RS So they will say that the film is crap but the soundrack is brilliant
T: Yeah, that’s the idea (laughs). No, not necessarily... It doesn’t have to be anyhting about high art. It could be any film about any subject. You should you be able to turn your mind around. I’m trying to do the opposite of what would be represented in such a film in terms of a soundtrack.

RS Is it natural for you to do the opposite of what would be ordinary?
T: It comes from an idea, it’s natural now.

RS Pick up a song that you think is representative of the album.
T: The long one (Reflections in the Plastic Pulse). It’s not necessary my fave track. I like the last track. My fave track was Rainbo Conversation but it didn’t quite come out as good as I thought it would sound.

RS Do you think there’s melody in the album? What do you want your music to sound like?
T: I want confusion to be the outcome of our music. People like encapsulation, and this is not what our music is about. It’s much more than that. I don’t want to understand our music and I don’t want people to understand it because it should be on many levels.

RS Do you ever read music magazines?
T: Yes, at the dentist’s.