{"podcast":{"title":"New Zealand Net Radio","slug":"new-zealand-net-radio-7869194","podcast_index_feed_id":7869194,"rss_url":"https://www.nznetradio.net.nz/podcast-feed-licensed.php","website_url":"https://www.nznetradio.net.nz","image_url":"https://www.nznetradio.net.nz/podcast-artwork/nznetradio-podcast-cover-1400.jpg","author":"New Zealand Net Radio","episode_count":41,"summary":"Recorded programmes and themed mixes from New Zealand Net Radio.","last_synced_at":"2026-09-24T02:21:06.537898+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-zealand-net-radio-7869194"},"episode":{"title":"Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Stereolab","slug":"musical-musings-five-of-the-best-stereolab","published_at":"2026-08-24T02:54:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-zealand-net-radio-7869194/musical-musings-five-of-the-best-stereolab","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-zealand-net-radio-7869194","url":"https://www.nznetradio.net.nz/podcast/#ep-97","audio_url":"https://www.nznetradio.net.nz/podcast-audio/Musical-Musings-Five-of-the-Best-Stereolab-2026-08-24-1454-licensed.m4a","summary":"Jarrett McCall is back on Musical Musings: Five of the Best, and after last time’s romp through the American seventies alphabet he’s narrowed his sights to a single band — one of the most quietly influential groups of the last thirty-five years. Stereolab were born in London in 1990 out of a Paris romance: Tim Gane, guitarist with the fiercely political indie band McCarthy, met the French singer Lætitia Sadier at one of his own gigs, and the two of them built something new around the relentless forward pulse of German krautrock, banks of vintage analogue keyboards, sixties lounge and French pop chord changes, and lyrics drawn from Situationist philosophy. They named themselves after a Vanguard Records imprint that made hi-fi demonstration discs, ran their own label, Duophonic, from the very first ten-inch, and were happily dubbed “space age bachelor pad music” — as well as being among the first bands anyone ever called post-rock. In 1992 the last piece arrived: an Australian singer and guitarist called Mary Hansen, whose weightless counterpoint to Sadier’s voice became the sound people mean when they say Stereolab. Jarrett’s five run chronologically from 1994 to 2004, and they are, quietly, a portrait of that second voice. We open with “Ping Pong” from Mars Audiac Quintet — the band’s biggest UK hit, ninth in John Peel’s Festive Fifty for 1994, and the sunniest tune ever written about the boom-and-bust cycle of capitalism. Then a deep cut from the album most people call their masterpiece, “Monstre Sacre” from 1996’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup, named after a Shūji Terayama film and made in Chicago with John McEntire of Tortoise. Next comes the loveliest thing they ever recorded, the harpsichord waltz “The Flower Called Nowhere” from 1997’s Dots and Loops, a track Gane descr…","meta_description":"Jarrett McCall is back on Musical Musings: Five of the Best, and after last time’s romp through the American seventies alphabet he’s narrowed his sights t…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3244,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-zealand-net-radio-7869194/episodes/musical-musings-five-of-the-best-stereolab/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-zealand-net-radio-7869194/musical-musings-five-of-the-best-stereolab.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}