Stereolab at Electric, Brixton

I'm up far too early, so what better thing to do than to reflect on Stereolab's Brixton gig on Sunday?

Their tracks (and also Laetitia's solo music) have been really standing out this year when I'd been listening to Riley and Coe's BBC6 show in the evenings, and when this date was added after the Royal Festival Hall sold out, it seemed like serendipity to buy a Christmas ticket or two.

We'd been spending most of the day listening to their music, yet I'm not enough of a fanwoman to be able to say 'this track, that track'. All I can do is think about the music which was of course, mesmerising. The songs have been arranged with flair and fun, with analogue beeps peeking out from guitar thrashes, exquisitely rehearsed stops and starts, thrilling key changes, and the commanding presence of Laetitia Sadier swapping instruments as though she was merely changing thoughts in her head. A bass trombone stood on a stand, and you could have knocked me down with a feather when it was she who actually lifted it to her lips and played the trombone lines. I watched the other musicians to see who was enjoying which songs (that's a musician's hobby). At one point, the guitarist was having such a lovely time he nearly wrenched his head off his neck, nodding, nodding. And how brilliant to have real drums in music that is sometimes so motorik! The set was a mixture of short, sharp songs with catchy choruses and longer pieces with rock-outs. I liked the short ones best: concentrated, focused thoughts in neat packages, but there was something here for everyone; different sections of the audience were cheering for different songs, which is hardly surprising given they are such a prolific band.

At times, I was almost driven to tears. Look what musicians do: they rehearse, they make songs, they process the human condition, they bring people together. They are not killing people with their machinery. They make mistakes, both technical and in thought. They are not perfect. But they reflect humanity and are born to do so, whether or not music is innate to their DNA. All that assembly of sound, words, nuance, and the layering of a human voice on top of it all, or integrated into a conversation with it all. It never ceases to fill me with awe and sometimes fills me with so much emotion that it spills beyond my body into something that can only be described as beyond human. What could be better than that?