Album Info Hide Show Artist: Stereolab Album: Cobra And Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky Night Released: Europe, 2019 Tracklist: A1 Fuses A2 People Do It All The Time A3 The Free Design A4 Blips Drips And Strips A5 Italian Shoes Continuum B1 Infinity Girl B2 The Spiracles B3 Op Hop Detonation B4 Puncture In The Radax Permutation B5 Velvet Water C1 Blue Milk D1 Caleidoscopic Gaze D2 Strobo Acceleration D3 The Emergency Kisses D4 Come And Play In The Milky Night E1 Galaxidion E2 With Friends Like These Pt. 2 E3 Backwards Shug E4 Continuum (Unreleased Original Version) E5 Continuum Vocodered (Unreleased) E6 People Do It All The Time (Demo) E7 Op Hop Detonation (Demo) E8 The Spiracles (Demo) E9 Latin Cobra Coda (Demo) F1 Infinity Girl (Demo) F2 Blips, Drips & Strips (Demo) F3 Blue Milk (Demo) F4 Italian Shoes Continuum (Demo) F5 Come And Play In The Milky Night (Demo) F6 Strobo Acceleration (Demo) F7 Caleidoscopic Gaze (Demo) F8 Galaxidion (Demo) Info About Buying Vinyl From Our Record Store We are a small independent record store located at 211 High St, Preston in Melbourne, Australia (North of Northcote, between Thornbury & Reservoir) We buy and sell new and used vinyl records – if you have a collection you’d like to sell please click here . 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We are strongly committed to customer satisfaction. If you experience any problems with your order contact us so we can rectify the situation. If the record arrives damaged or doesn’t arrive we will cover the cost of replacing or returning the record. If you change your mind you have 30 days to return your record but you must cover the cost of returning it to the store. You can contact our Melbourne record shop at (03) 9939 3807 or at [email protected] Happy Listening! Description Hide Show Pulling this one off the shelf still feels like a small event. Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night landed in 1999, right as Stereolab were leaning deepest into their lush, proggy side, and it remains a curious pleasure to sink into. The core chemistry is in full swing here. Tim Ganes cycling guitar figures and analogue synths, Laetitia Sadiers cool, precise voice, and the late Mary Hansens harmonies create the familiar motorik glide, but the palette is richer and stranger. With John McEntire and Jim ORourke guiding the sessions in Chicago at Soma Electronic Music Studios, the group stitched jazz voicings, musique concrte touches and vibraphone sparkle into their retrofuturist pop in a way that felt both heady and playful. You hear that ambition straight away in the way horns and strings thread through the album without grandstanding. Arrangements bloom, then slip away before they overstay. The writing is meticulous but never rigid, so a song can pivot from a soft-focus bossa sway to a pulsing, almost laboratory-clean groove and it just makes sense. The Free Design is the obvious in, a buoyant single with a melody that sticks and a title that nods to the cult sunshine pop group. Its the bands knack for finding utopian light inside a maze of odd time signatures and analogue gear, delivered with a grin. Then theres Blue Milk, which remains the records most hypnotic provocation. It stretches past the 11-minute mark and turns repetition into a hall of mirrors, tones folding back on themselves until you start noticing tiny shifts in grain and colour. Its not background drift so much as slow-motion architecture. Put it on at volume and the room changes shape. Elsewhere, pieces like Puncture in the Radax Permutation and Italian Shoes Continuum lean into tumbling rhythms and pointillist keys, all those Moogs, Farfisas and mallet instruments interlocking with a drummers sense of swing. The band never chases a conventional chorus just to settle a song. They prefer tension that coils and releases like a spring. Sadiers lyrics continue to glance off politics and power structures with clipped poise. She never sermonises. Instead, slogans dissolve into mantra, then back into melody. That approach suits the records texture-first mindset. Even when a line snaps into focus, the arrangement keeps nudging you toward the details, a flute that flickers at the edge or a bass run that briefly steals the spotlight. At the time, some critics wanted something brasher after the cult success of Emperor Tomato Ketchup and the pop-forward charm of Dots and Loops, and the reception could be prickly. Over the years the mood has softened. The bands reissue campaign brought a careful remaster and a stack of demos that helped listeners hear the internal logic at work here, and outlets that once shrugged gave it a warmer welcome. It turns out Cobra wasnt a cul-de-sac. It was Stereolab taking their motorik-pop language and bending it toward chamber jazz and electro-acoustic collage, an approach they would refine again on Sound-Dust. On vinyl the album breathes the way its meant to. The sprawling double LP spread gives the low end room, and the percussion has that woody, tactile snap you want from this band. If youve only streamed it, hunting down Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night vinyl is worth it for Blue Milk alone, which settles into a deeper pocket on wax. As with most Stereolab vinyl, quiet pressings matter because so much magic happens in the margins, and this record is full of margins. If youre crate-digging in a Melbourne record store and spot it, grab first, debate later. Copies dont linger. For those who buy Stereolab records online, recent reissues make it easier to find a clean set without remortgaging the house, and they sit nicely alongside other Stereolab albums on vinyl if youre building the shelf out from Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements through to Not Music. Its a good one to pull out when youre showing a curious mate how deep this bands catalogue runs, and it slots neatly into any well-loved stack of vinyl records Australia has to offer. Cobra is not the instant hit-maker in their discography, but its the album that rewards a long weekend and a decent sound system. Put it on, let those oscillators purr, and remember how rare it is for a group to make experimental music feel this inviting. Product Reviews Hide Show Write a Review