The hardest-working Marxists in show business are keeping production levels steady-to-booming: Stereolab has just issued Oscillons From The Anti-Sun (Too Pure/Beggars), a three-CD collection of selected singles, b-sides and EPs. Also included is a fourth disc containing videos and live performances recorded for British TV. Oscillons roughly spans the period of Stereolab’s tenure on Elektra Records, which ended with last year’s Margerine Eclipse. The group recently signed with Too Pure, which reissued 1992’s Switched On earlier this year and has just released A Few Steps More, the second album by vocalist Laetitia Sadier’s other band, Monade. That Sadier and husband/Stereolab co-leader Tim Gane divorced in 2004 has seemingly had no effect on the group’s industry; a new Stereolab full-length is expected in 2006.

MAGNET reached Sadier by phone at her home in Bordeaux, France.

The title of the EPs/singles collection is true to Stereolab form: Oscillons From The Anti-Sun. I mean, there’s no way it would’ve just been titled EP Collection, would it?
No. [Laughs] I like that title, and I think the sleeve is gorgeous. So this collects all the EPs we recorded with Elektra—they were EPs that weren’t released, as far as I know, domestically in the U.S. I guess people don’t really buy EPs in the States.

Not so much, no.
It’s something that Tim would insist on doing, and I never really saw the point of releasing an EP. Commercially, an EP or single could herald the coming of an LP. But artistically, four tracks is not enough. However, it’s very nice that they’re all collected like this. I’m sorry, I’m throwing flowers at myself here—but I do like it. We’ve been going on for 15 years, and it’s quite historical. I never listen to our old records, let alone EPs. I was surprised at the quality of them. [Laughs] I didn’t think they were so good! It’s nice to see how the sound evolved. Plus, it has the disc of DVDs of the little videos we made for three dollars ...

One of the interesting about Oscillons is that the tracks are all mixed up—they’re not in chronological order. Did you talk about that when assembling the tracks for this?
I think Tim decided to mix it up, and I think it’s probably a good idea because it would’ve been too linear or boring somehow to put one (release) after another.

And it’s actually kind of fun to try to figure out what time period each track is from. Say, from the more krautrock-y era of 1996’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup or the more loungey 1997 album Dots And Loops.
Yes, it could be a game at a dinner party or something. [Laughs]

I’ve read interviews where you’ve said that you thought Stereolab is constantly developing and improving. Is that modesty, or do you really think that Stereolab hasn’t reached its full potential yet?
No, it’s not modesty. I always have the feeling that the best is yet to come somehow, knowing perfectly well that we’re not going toward something that’s absolutely perfect. The last album that we did (Margerine Eclipse) was very good—it’s a record that I enjoy listening to, which was not the case with the albums before, really. Although I quite like Dots And Loops and Emperor Tomato Ketchup. It’s just the tendency to think you can always do better somehow.

So it’s almost a kind of optimism?
It’s my optimism, yeah. You learn from your previous records, and you trust that there is more and that it can be done more interesting, differently, that you can twist things around into things that haven’t been heard in this life before. I kind of trust that. I think some people give themselves a lot of barriers before they’ve even really given it a chance. But maybe it’s not always possible. Sometimes the worst is yet to come.

But that’s the exciting part—not knowing.
Not knowing, but still hoping for the best.

There’s also a Switched On reissue, and just this week I got a record where Stereolab/High Llamas did a remix of a song by the Free Design. Where does Stereolab’s work ethic come from?
You should speak to Tim about this; to him, it’s not work. Although it is work, because he puts in all the hours. He just enjoys it. He enjoys drinking good wine and doing music. I don’t know if that’s a work ethic.

In America, we often refer to a Puritan or Protestant work ethic, but I’m guessing it doesn’t have to do with religion in your case.
What is this type of work ethic? That you work your ass off?

Pretty much, yeah. It’s tied in with a belief in the inherent value of hard work.
In Tim’s case, I think he’s just incredibly passionate about music. I’ve never met anyone as passionate and as obsessed with music as Tim. And I guess that results in him constantly working with music, basically.

Living with Tim, did you sometimes have to separate him from music? If you went on vacation, did you tell him to leave the records at home?
For many years, we didn’t go on vacation. We were always either on the road or in a studio recording. For years. I don’t live with Tim anymore. But when we did go on vacation, we made many compilations and took many records with us and a portable CD player. [Laughs]

I wanted to ask you about Monade—what does that word mean, by the way?
It’s a strange word. When I picked the name in 1996 or 1997, I didn’t understand exactly what it meant. I read it in a big book called The Imaginary Institution Of Society. It was a book that was hard to read but I was happy when I understood something. The man who wrote it, Cornelius Castoriadis, wrote that the monade is a part of the brain where there are no contradictions, where it is absolute. I thought that was an interesting concept. Much later, Stereolab was playing a show in Greece and I saw they had phone cards for 50 monades or 100 monades. So monade also means unit; I then also realized that monade comes from (the root) of “mono,” and my other band has (the word) “stereo” in it. So the name had a lot of relevance for my solo project. But now we’re a band, although it’s true we have arguments. But it’s richer with more people, more interesting.

Tell me about your trombone playing on the Monade record—I didn’t know you played the trombone at all.
I picked it up about four years ago. What’s wonderful about the trombone is that it gives you whatever you put in it. If you put in a lot of hours (practicing), it will give you a lot of satisfaction.

It’s a very physical instrument.
Yes, it’s physical. It’s feminine and masculine at the same time, and it’s high and low at the same time. I rarely heard it played the way I like it. The trombone fit me. A girl called Sara (Smith) was in a band called Isotope 217, she really inspired me to play it.

Stereolab has been a huge part of your life for about 15 years. When you sit down to write music for Monade, do you have to almost unlearn all the things you’ve absorbed in Stereolab to try and make it something new, something that’s more your own?
It’s quite simple, because Tim writes the music in Stereolab, and I write the lyrics. So I didn’t have to unlearn anything to write for Monade. I don’t want to completely unlearn what I’ve done (with Stereolab), and to find my own voice is going to take time. It’s going to take more than two albums. But already I’ve found there is a core to what I do. A lot of people say Monade sounds like stripped-down Stereolab, but [sighs] ... I don’t know. Tim and I have been together a long time and have influenced one another.