PIAS Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Opening track 'Bruise' could be HVOB's toughest and most driving, while 'The Lack of You' definitely ranks up there with their most emotionally captivating and moving. Overall, Too may be the electronic-dance-alt-pop team's finest hour to date, and that's no mean feat considering just how insanely good everything they have done up to this point has been.

While packing plenty for the dancefloor, and being built entirely from machines, Too is a human work at its core, running through the gamut of our vast emotional scope, from the joyful to the mournful, teeth-clenched determination to absolute oblivion. From arena-filling body movers like 'Kid Anthem' to the intimate euphoria of 'A Piece of Me', it's quite literally all here.

Review: It wasn't planned that Stereolab would manage to keep up their 'Switched On' series beyond the compilation's first 1992 release, but now, hey ho, we're onto its fifth edition. Unlike the first volume, the newer editions in the series such as volume 5 here lean more towards rarities, odds and ends; 'Robot Riot', for example, was originally written to accompany a Charles Long sculpture, and 'Yes Sir! I Can Moogie' was originally only released on a specific format for the Wurlitzer jukebox. Every track has a similar backstory, and it's this kind of analogue worship we love so dearly.