Stereolab Return With Instant Holograms On Metal Film

Latest album is the band’s first in 15 years

May 26, 2025 Ron Hart 0 Comments Instant Holograms On Metal Film, Laetitia Sadier, Stereolab, Tim Gane, Warp Records

Stereolab on metal film. (Image: Warp Records)

Stereolab are back from a 15-year studio absence with a fantastic new album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film.

Speaking on the album’s creation, Tim Gane says: “The idea to record a new LP came into focus around spring/summer 2023 and we started recording in January 2024. There were no rehearsals, as usual. We started again from scratch. ‘Always a beginner’ is my attitude to things, just feeling my way through. Music is just an exciting adventure and I don’t have any trepidation about doing it or presenting it to others. What comes out comes out.”

What makes this album, the group’s 11th and first set of new material since signing to Warp Records, so distinct is the larger role Sadier played in its creation.

“I see everything as a continuum with no determined sections, that bears no relation to what has come before or will come after,” she said. “In the case of Stereolab, Tim is primary composer. On this LP, I did, however, have much more musical input than before. And indeed I had had some practice through developing my own music over the past years, which surely nourished the sound and general configuration.”

Stereolab Instant Holograms On Metal Film, Warp Records 2025

Instant Holograms marks the first Stereolab album to emerge with the group’s new lineup, comprised of founding members Laetitia Sadier and Tim Gane along with the new guys from their touring lineup Andy Ramsay, Joe Watson and Xavi Muñoz. There’s also a slew of special guests who make appearances across these 13 new songs, including Cooper Crain and Rob Frye (Bitchin Bajas), Ben LaMar Gay (International Anthem), Ric Elsworth, Holger Zapf (Cavern Of Anti-Matter), Marie Merlet and Molly Hansen Read.

“I’m a big fan of Bitchin’ Bajas and we had toured with then in the US in 2019 so got to know them well,” Gane explains in regards to working with Cooper Crain. “When we decided to make a new record, he was the only person I had in mind and luckily he could do it. Just like (previous collaborators) John McEntire and Jim O’Rourke, he is an inventive musician as well as a great engineer/producer, and that’s what we like.”

Just as the Anglo-French band has done since forming 35 years ago, Stereolab always touches upon elements of political discourse within the crux of their space-age bachelor pad indie pop. And with Instant Holograms, they’ve certainly crafted an album that aims to deliver a message of hope in the face of seemingly untenable odds.

“As the world falls apart, whether we are aware of it or not, we are already planting the seeds of what will come next,” explains Sadier. “I think it is important to keep in sight what powerful creators we are, and how there is power available to us at this stage to choose what outcome we would like to see for this yet undefined future. The words seek to expose that this is what we do: We create. Our imagination is here to serve that purpose, and is the power we have to choose whatever it is we want to see come about. Some privileged people do not like the idea of sharing this power with the people at large.”

Listen to Instant Holograms On Metal Film below.