Pop music. It’s meant to be fun. Not [I]too[/I] serious. That, presumably, was the initial premise behind [a]Stereo Total[/a], the Berlin-based group whose four albums for the Bungalow label have never been released in this country because, it was assumed, we ‘wouldn’t get’ the band’s, um, unique approach to music-making.
If that is the case, then it’s a miracle the four-piece have, in their five years, conquered underground Europe, seduced the States (Make Up adore them) and acquired the kind of international cult following usually reserved for serial killers and [I]The Benny Hill Show[/I]. Indeed, such is their curious career path (French singer/songwriter Frangoise Cactus is also an author and newspaper columnist in Germany; guitarist Brezel Goring invents his own instruments) that it’s oddly fitting that yesterday’s synth bloke [a]Momus[/a] should licence their 24 finest moments for this compilation on his Analog Baroque imprint. It is, in a way, the best thing he’s ever done.
Because no-one sounds like [a]Stereo Total[/a]: they’re a tri-lingual, multi-disciplined, electronic, shambolic rock’n’roll echo from the future with a heightened awareness of life’s absurdities. Like Cactus sings on ‘Holiday Inn’, [a]Stereo Total[/a] are, [I]”A particularity/A little bit strange but really funny”[/I], and probably the best pop group you’ve never heard.