Ghost Power

★★★★ Ghost Power DUOPHONIC SUPER 45s. CD/DL/LP

Stereolab anchorman resurfaces for more bachelor-pad hi-jinks. Although they’ve reconvened for live shows since 2019, Stereolab 2.0 have been reluctant so far to release any new material. After a few albums as part of Cavern Of Anti-Matter, Tim Gane’s esoteric recording energies currently seem focused on Ghost Power, a duo with New Yorker Jeremy Novak, who Stereolab completists might recall from Dymaxion, signed to Duophonic in the ’90s. Ghost Power’s full-length debut is, happily, pretty much what you’d expect: pulsating retro-futurist instrumentals, seemingly designed for a science-fiction spy TV show on the cusp of the ’70s, with Peter Thomas’s looming score for Raumpatrouille a likely inspiration (especially on Grimalkin). The best ’Lab analogue is probably ’94’s Mars

Audiac Quintet, but among the high-fidelity squelch and harpsichord trim, there are neat, albeit Deutsche-aligned, innovations: a touch of ’80s Tangerine Dream on Vertical Section; 15 minutes of levitational ambient ritual on the closing Astral Melancholy Suite. John Mulvey