Bleep

Stereolab announce a new album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film, available on 23rd May 2025, co-released by the band’s own label Duophonic UHF Disks, and Warp Records. Their first new record in fifteen years, it features thirteen songs written by Laetitia Sadier and Tim Gane; performed by Laetitia, Tim, Andy Ramsay, Joe Watson and Xavi Muñoz, who comprise the current touring line-up of the band.

Last week, some fans of the band received a package stamped “unsolicited Stereolab material”. Inside was a 7” single containing “Aerial Troubles” on one side, an instrumental version on the flip, with a cryptic wordsearch insert. At the same time, posters with the band’s name appeared in a number of major cities with the same word grid printed on. Over the past few days, several attempts have been made to solve the wordsearch, with much online speculation about how the words go together, and whether the single did indeed contain new music, or something uncovered from the band’s archives.

Over the past few days, there has been a slow reveal of the album cover art on the Lab Report sign up page of the band’s website, with different layers gradually appearing. The 7” started landing with people on 2nd April 2025, sixteen years to the day after the groop announced they were going on indefinite hiatus. In 2019 the band released expanded and remastered editions of seven of their studio albums, coinciding with Stereolab playing live for the first time in nine years. They have continued to tour sporadically since then, and have augmented their catalogue further with the release of the compilations Electrically Possessed [Switched On Vol 4] in 2021, and Pulse Of The Early Brain [Switched On Vol 5] in 2022.