‘International Colouring Contest’: Stereolab’s tribute to a pioneering space-age pop musician
After aspiring French musician Lætitia Sadier met Tim Gane from the British group McCarthy, it didn’t take long for the two to begin a relationship – and a band soon followed. This new musical project was to be named Stereolab, and after recruiting a few more members, they released their first EP, Super 45, in 1991.
The following year, the group put out their debut album, Peng!, which reached number six on the UK Independent Charts. Throughout the subsequent decades, Stereolab released EPs and albums that represented an interest in krautrock, indie pop, psychedelia and space-age pop. Each album possessed a seemingly timeless feel, with Sadier moving between French and English lyrics.
Their most well-known album, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, was released in 1996 and featured songs such as ‘Metronomic Underground’ and ‘Cybele’s Reverie’, with the latter making it onto the UK Singles Chart. The group have since garnered a cult following and is remembered as one of the more underrated yet highly innovative bands of the ‘90s.
Taking inspiration from everything from The Beach Boys, 1960s synth artists and a variety of philosophers, Stereolab are far from your conventional indie outfit. Their interest in cosmic sounds is apparent in early work such as the 1993 EP Space Age Bachelor Pad Music. The following year, they released Mars Audiac Quintet, predominantly featuring spacey, out-of-this-world synths.
The album features the song ‘International Colouring Contest’, which is a tribute to the eccentric musician Lucia Pamela, known for her album Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela. Recorded in 1969, the same year humans touched down on the moon for the first time, the musician genuinely believed that her album had been recorded there, too. It featured works like ‘Walking on the Moon’ and ‘In the Year 2,000!!!’, which were part of a narrative about Pamela visiting the moon.
She played all of the instruments on the record, with the opening lines being “We’re taking off to the moon. Fasten your seatbelts. Let’s go!” Pamela moves between speaking and singing to depict her findings on the moon. Instrumentally, she uses sci-fi-esque synths alongside pianos and various forms of percussion and reed instruments, often creating songs that sound like pieces from a vaudeville performance.
Whether you can consider Pamela’s album necessarily ‘good’ is another question – it is poorly recorded, as she once stated, “The air is so thin everything sounds different up there [on the moon]”, and predominantly showcases a child-like excitement for space travel.
Still, Pamela’s album is an iconic piece of musical history, especially in relation to the rise of cosmic, space-age pop that emerged in conjunction with the great space race. To honour the quirky musician, Stereolab included a clip of Pamela’s voice at the beginning of ‘International Colouring Contest’, where she laughs and says, “I’m so full of ideas! Here’s a good one…”
Sadier then sings, “Into outer space with Lucia Pamela/ The moon is the place where there’s space for Lucia” and “Before Armstrong took his steps/ She’d been there with friends/ They took all instruments and/ Recorded on the moon.”
The song is named after the colouring book that Pamela created called Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela in the Year 2000. Beginning in 1969, Pamela held an international colouring contest for people to participate in. Stereolab reminds us, “For your entry, she’s waiting.” Sadly, Pamela passed away in 2002, marking the end of the competition.
