Weird Chemistry : In Stereolab, Vintage Rock Synthesizes Into ‘Emperor Tomato Ketchup’

It might not be something the Guinness folks would care to recognize, but the English-French band Stereolab appears to be a legitimate contender for a very obscure world record: most members of a rock band credited with playing the Vox organ on the same album.

The total, in Stereolab’s case, is four, achieved in 1993 on the six-piece band’s first major-label release, “Transient Random Noise-Bursts With Announcements.”

The Vox and its cousin, the Farfisa, along with an assortment of outdated synthesizers, including the Moog and VCS3, are among the distinctive, ‘60s- and early-’70s-vintage tools that contribute to Stereolab’s sound. Drones, grinds, whirs, blips and buzzes from the formative days of underground rock (ancestor to the now very aboveground “alternative” category) stand in for the latest sampling technology.

Stereolab loves to patch together a collage of contrasting pieces of the pop past, from hypnotic Velvet Underground-style drones and driving riffs to airy approximations of the light-as-helium pop of the Fifth Dimension.

Dispensing with the state-of-the-art sampling technology commonly used nowadays to raid the recorded past, Stereolab prefers to grow its music, uh, organically.

When the band records, reports Tim Gane, its co-founder and chief sonic architect, “We have about five organs lying around, all plugged in and ready to go.”

Gane, 31, is a guitar player who says his ability on keyboards is rudimentary. But he loves those early rock organ sounds and cites underground-rock classics like “Sister Ray” by the Velvets (primitive avant-gardist organ shrieks and drones by John Cale) and “Roadrunner” by the Modern Lovers (wheezy garage-rock organ grandeur by future Talking Head Jerry Harrison) as ear-grabbing rock moments that would inspire him to cram a studio with so much antique machinery.

“That roughed-up organ, put through an amp and distorted--I don’t know why, but I’m always attracted to that kind of sound,” Gane said recently over the phone from a flat in South London that has been converted into an office for Stereolab’s custom label, Duophonic. “I don’t like things too clean. I like a bit of spillage.”

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With its new album, “Emperor Tomato Ketchup,” Stereolab (which begins a series of Southern California dates Thursday at Cal State Fullerton) moves forward in rock time, but not too far. The “Ketchup” recipe includes synthesized “treatments” of rock instruments that Brian Eno devised in the early ‘70s on his first two solo albums and in his hitch with Roxy Music.

“I don’t consider these questions [of influence] to be important,” Gane said, without the annoyance some rock musicians show when confronted with evidence that they are not inventors but inheritors. “I follow an obsession wherever it goes, and certain [sounds] you find attractive you come back to.”

The other defining element of Stereolab’s sound is the vocal blend between a murmuring, siren-like lead singer, Laetitia Sadier, and the similarly airy counter-songs of Mary Hansen.

Gane sums up Stereolab’s approach in spatial terms: “I do [organ and guitar] drones in the lower areas to free up the top. It means you can develop strange melodies and harmonies and layer them.”

Sadier’s singing--sometimes in French, sometimes in accented English that might as well be another language--creates some of that strangeness, as does her penchant for writing lyrics that can seem like terse fragments from a text on socialist political theory.

Gane thinks that Sadier’s book-learned English is one reason for the formal-sounding cast of some of her writing. “That’s one reason the lyrics will be [oblique]--that slight awkwardness, which I quite like, personally.”

Sadier’s words are often mantra-like repetitions that focus on such abstractions as historical theory or the harmful fallout of capitalist economics. The aim is not to put forth a political platform, Gane said, but to throw out ideas to be mulled over.

Sadier shows a more personal side on “Monstre Sacre,” a track from “Emperor Tomato Ketchup” inspired by her mother’s death. Gane’s accompanying music is haunting and dirge-like, in contrast to the sprightly, dreamy or hard-driving garage-rock modes most common to Stereolab.

Gane said his childhood ambition was “to be on a record before I was 18,” and he fulfilled it at 17 as a young soldier in Britain’s indie-rock movement.

He met Sadier, now 27, when his band, McCarthy, was playing in Paris. The two first struck up their ongoing romantic relationship, then launched Stereolab in May 1991.

Gane said he named the band after a ‘60s record label that specialized in LPs demonstrating, with music and sound effects, the hi-fi possibilities of the then-novel processes of stereo recording. Gane was an avid collector.

Stereolab’s catalog includes numerous independent-label singles, EPs and compilations, in addition to three full-length CDs on Elektra. The touring lineup consists of guitarists Gane and Hansen on guitars, Sadier on lead vocals and synthesizer, another Frenchwoman, organist Morgane Lhote, drummer Andy Ramsey and new addition Richard Harrison, bass.

Simon Holiday, the band’s sound engineer since its early days, has creative input as well: The band leaves it to him to run the instruments through a synthesizer at the sound desk as he sees fit.

Stereolab isn’t set up to concoct hits, Gane says: “I’m surprised we’re as popular in certain places as we are,” including the United States, where, he says, the band has always been gratified by the enthusiastic response of its cult following.

But, he added, “at times I feel slightly aggrieved that we’ve been kind of marginalized for the goofy sounds and the French. I think there are some semi-accessible songs comparable with [successful tunes by] other bands that are more traditional. It’s overlooked. I guess it comes from messing around too much.”

* Stereolab, Prolapse and Track Star play Thursday at the University Center Pub at Cal State Fullerton, 800 N. State College Blvd. 8 p.m. $6-$10. (714) 773-3501. Also: Friday at Brick by Brick, 1130 Buenos Ave., San Diego. 9 p.m. $9. (619) 275-5483; Saturday at the Glass House, 200 W. 2nd St., Pomona. $10. (714) 665-7739 or (909) 872-6181; and Sunday and Monday at the Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. 8 p.m. $15. Monday’s show is sold out. (310) 276-6168.