(Duophonic)Motorik grooves, Marxist critique and vintage synths – in their first album since 2010, Lætitia Sadier et al pick up where they left off yet sound more timely than everThe first sound you hear on Stereolab’s first new studio album in 15 years is a burst of arpeggiated synth tones. It sounds not unlike the once futuristic ident of a long-defunct TV channel. The first words you hear Lætita Sadier and backing vocalist Marie Merlet sing – their voices winding around each other in a sweet-but-sad melody, over the tight, mid-tempo rhythm of Aerial Troubles – are “the numbing is not working any more / An unfillable hole, an insatiable state of consumption (systemic) / assigned trajectory (extortion).”To which, of course, the seasoned Stereolab fan might break into a contented smile of recognition and sigh “mais naturellement”. A retro-futurist aesthetic; tight, hypnotic grooves derived from the motorik krautrock of Neu!; vintage synthesiser tones and vocals that entwine around e...