"It's the title of a Japanese movie that we read about in a subversive film book," explains Sadier from an LA stop on a tour that brings the six-member group to Mama Kin this Sunday, May 26. "I think the film is about some children who stage a revolution because they don't want to have to conform to the rules of the adult society. Even though we haven't seen the film, we thought the title represented the music on the CD."

Emperor Tomato Ketchup opens with what sounds like some old-school hip-hop-style scratching against a simple drum beat, a light-funk bass line, and a diffuse backdrop of percolating electronic noise. Images of an explosive armed insurgence aren't the first thing that come to mind. Instead, "Metronomic Underground" coalesces slowly into a mesmerizing pastiche of mantra-like vocals, two-note organ chords, and unobtrusive guitar patterns. At first Sadier and second vocalist Mary Hansen seem to be weaving together intersecting patterns of disconnected syllables. But pockets of meaning gradually come into focus. By the time the song begins to wind down, almost eight minutes later, ambiguous words and phrases like "crazy, "brutal," and "to be infinite" have ripened like some sweet, poisonous, symbolic fruit hanging on robust vines of melody.

"Music is fundamentally ambiguous," critic Greil Marcus once wrote in a review of the band New Order, "which is why its symbol-making power is so great. Music can make the dumbest lyrics sound profound, but ultimately it can support no specific message: its symbol-making power is the power of making the ambiguous symbol . . . and from this contradiction comes tension, the source of a song's ability to dramatize the process by which a symbol is created."

Stereolab instinctively heighten this sense of tension and drama by drawing out the process of symbol-making through appropriation, repetition, and collage. That used to take them up to 18 minutes (see "Jenny Ondioline" on the 1993 Elektra disc Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements). But they're now capable of telegraphing their message in a catchy three- or four-minute song burst like "Percolator," a brisk tune buoyed by a fast-moving bass line and percussive organ chords and layered with synth blips and beeps, treated saxophone, and the unmistakable metallic ping of a mallet on a vibraphone. Sadier sings the entire song in French, but she repeats key phrases like "naviguer une direction" enough times that even a non-French speaker like me can get the gist. "Percolator" becomes as clear as "Metronomic Underground."

Elsewhere, Sadier uses a monochromatic voice reminiscent of Nico to lend an air of innocent seduction to what could easily be stolen socialist bromides. "Originally this set-up was to serve society/Now the roles have been reversed/They want society to serve the institutions," she recites again and again in a chanteuse-like trance on "Tomorrow Is Already Here," a track on which syncopated guitar and organ chords interlock like the cogs of some jury-rigged music machine. The disc closes with Sadier repeating "You and me are molded by things well beyond our acknowledgment" under a hypnotic expanse of low-frequency synth tones. The song, "Anonymous Collective," might come off as a blatant piece of agit-pop if not for the subtle, ironic blanket of mystery created by the sonic texture.

"It's subtle because we're not sure what we're doing," Sadier explains. "We're just putting forward some questions about how we are shaped and molded by what surrounds us. I mean, a lot of things that aren't readily visible have a tremendous impact on our behavior, our actions, and our non-actions. It's like the way the title of an album shapes the way you hear the music on it."

Or, you might say, it's like the way we all participate in the process of symbol-making. Stereolab are one of the few bands around willing to go out on a limb and implicitly acknowledge the listener's right to (as Greil Marcus put it) "free-associate within the structured, dramatic, excluding frame of music." And that's at least as subversive as a film about youth rebellion.

Further experiments

* Switched On Stereolab (Slumberland, 1992). The band's debut compiles the numerous singles released on Duophonic the preceding year. Gane lays down a warm, resonant foundation of strummed guitars that should appeal to any fan of the Velvet Underground; then he layers on all manner of lo-fi electronic interference. Sadier sticks to singing in English for most of the disc. It's a catchy collection of indie pop that begins the development of the sophisticated pastiche rock that the band would later master.

* Peng! (Too Pure/American, 1993/1995). Featuring the four-person line-up of Gane (guitar, Farfisa, Moog synthesizer), Martin Kean (bass), Joe Dilworth (drums), and Sadier (vocals, Moog), this 47-minute disc opens with a breath of ethereal pop that bears a passing resemblance to the Cocteau Twins. But the band head straight for the Autobahn on songs like "Orgiastic," "Peng! 33," and the wonderful, organ-fueled "Mellotron," reveling in the hypnotic pleasures of metronomic beats and linear drones -- a minimalist chug-and-chime approach to mechanized rock that fans of Neu! and Kraftwerk may remember by the name of "motorik."

* the groop played "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music" (Too Pure/American EP, 1993/1995). With a cover that's designed to look like an old stereo-test album from the '50s, and Gane's increasing command of electronic manipulations and pop hooks, this eight-cut offering highlights the stylistic tension in Stereolab's sonic spectrum. "We're Not Adult Oriented" and "Avant Garde M.O.R." are two of the finest examples of blissful organ-driven rock you're likely to find east of Yo La Tengo. The instrumentals "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (Mellow)" and "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (Foamy)" are pure aural experiments. Despite the title, there's nothing in the way of Esquivel-style cocktail music.

* Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements (Elektra, 1993). Stereolab prove they're capable of consolidating their hypno-drone approach into mostly bite-sized chunks of noisy pop. "I'm Going Out of My Way" starts by copping the familiar pounding organ riff of the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner" and ends with a flurry of electronic blips. "Pack Yr Romantic Mind," which features a snippet of the melody from "Strangers in the Night" and languorous "dum de dum de dum" background vocals, embodies some of the '60s exotica the band alluded to in the title of their previous EP. It's also one of their most fragile and beautiful tunes. But "Jenny Ondioline," a relentlessly catchy 18-minute organ-laced drone and a study in repetitive riffing that would make Mark E. Smith proud, is the disc's real tour de force.

* Mars Audiac Quintet (Elektra, 1994). Boasting a robust line-up of six members, three of whom are credited with playing keyboards of some kind, and a much warmer, more hi-fi sound than its predecessors, Mars Audiac Quintet is understated without sacrificing melodic impact. Sadier's penchant for wrapping her alluring accent around Marxist aphorisms like "Progress is the clue" and philosophical bromides like "Two inevitables/We can't avoid dying" surfaces in the melodic glow of "Wow and Flutter" and "Transona Five."

* Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Volume 2) (Too Pure/American, 1995). Here's another collection of singles and rarities, including tracks originally released by Sub Pop, Teenbeat, Duophonic, and Slumberland, and one tune lifted from the group's 1993 EP Crumb Duck (Clawfist). This last is a collaboration between Stereolab and British industrial loner Steve Stapleton of Nurse with Wound. But like all the rest of the tracks here, it's just another example of Stereolab's seemingly inexhaustible supply of hooks, drones, and melodies.

* That's All Very Well But . . . The Best of McCarthy (Cherry Red, 1996). Anyone willing to shell out the extra bucks for this 22-track import will find that Gane once played guitar in a band who excelled at solid Smiths-style rock and shared Stereolab's lefty leanings. Aside from blending politics and pop, the tracks on this disc bear only the faintest hints of what Gane would go on to do once he hooked up with Sadier and started toying around with old synths and organs.

-- MA