Duophonic and Warp enter another phase of their Stereolab reissues programme. The latest LP from the band’s long, illustrious history to be blessed with a smart new edition is their seventh album Sound-Dust. Having worked with Sonic Youth’s Jim O’Rourke and Tortoise’s John McEntire on 1999’s Cobra And Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky Night, Stereolab decided to get the pair involved again two years later by having them produce Sound-Dust.

The music that Laetitia Sadier and Tim Gane made for Sound-Dust continued to further Stereolab’s case as an avant-pop group par excellence. This record finds them working across a typically broad array of styles, with bossa nova, Krautrock and 60’s-style chansons all touched upon here. Certain tracks find more joy in the cerebral library-pop sound that they had been perfecting for more than a decade by the time this album was released - the midsection run between ‘Baby Lulu’ and ‘Double Rocker’ features some particularly fine songs in this vein.

As has been the case with all of the other Duophonic/Warp editions, this new version of Sound-Dust has been remastered from the original tapes under the watchful eye of Gane himself. We also get a plethora of bonus beats - eight demos to be exact. It’s fascinating to see how the band grew a track like ‘Black Ants In Sound-Dust’ out of a hypnotic scritch-scratch guitar sketch.

Sound-Dust is the latest album from Stereolab’s golden age to be given a bespoke reissue from Duophonic and Warp.

Stereolab’s 2004 LP Margerine Eclipse may not be the group’s most famous work, but it has a good claim to being one of their best. The band’s eighth studio album, Margerine Eclipse saw Stereolab somewhat rein in the avant-gardisms they’d toyed with on records such as Cobra And Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky Night. Taken in tandem with revisiting their early penchant for quirky, fuzzy pseudo-rock (‘Margerine Rock’, ‘Bop Scotch’) and incorporating new influences like dub and groovy post-punk, Margerine Eclipse is sort of like Stereolab’s whole aesthetic in miniature. The album was also the first full-length record that Stereolab released after the death of member Mary Hansen - a matter tackled by the band on the dreamy, swelling ‘Feel And Triple’.

For this deluxe new edition of the album, Warp and Duophonic pair Margerine Eclipse with Stereolab’s 2003 EP Instant 0 In The Universe and a selection of rare bonus cuts. Both that EP and Margerine Eclipse were released in ‘dual mono’ - a production technique that means each instrument is panned to one side of the monitors in a manner not dissimilar to some of George Martin’s work with The Beatles - an effect which gives the records a unique feel. As with Warp and Duophonic’s other recent Stereolab reissues, this version of Margerine Eclipse has also been remastered from the original tapes.

The huge amount of great music made by Stereolab means that albums like Margerine Eclipse can go under the radar. Augmented by some choice additional cuts, this new edition of Margerine Eclipse aims to redress the balance.