Synopsis

The black-and-white video presents "Cybele's Reverie" as a stylized dream of childhood and memory. Close-ups of Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen are intercut with performance footage and images of a theatrically made-up female figure, creating a playful, slightly uncanny atmosphere. Rather than telling a literal story, the clip relies on faces, gestures, stark compositions, and retro visual textures. Its imagery echoes the song's references to gardens, old houses, walls, trees, silence, and the uneasy distance between the past and the future.

Factoids & Trivia

• "Cybele's Reverie" was released in 1996 as the lead single from Stereolab's fourth album, *Emperor Tomato Ketchup*.

• The song is performed entirely in French. Its accompanying EP is unusual in the Stereolab catalog because none of its four tracks are in English.

• The vocal arrangement pairs Laetitia Sadier's lead with Mary Hansen's distinctive wordless backing parts, an interplay that became one of the track's most recognizable features.

• The album version runs for 4:42, while the single and EP version is an edited 2:56 take that fades earlier.

• Sean O'Hagan's string arrangement gives the song much of its sweeping, unusually lush character. Stereolab later described the track as one of their most emotionally engaging pop songs.

• The single reached No. 62 on the UK singles chart, making it one of Stereolab's notable mid-1990s chart entries.

• "Cybele's Reverie" was voted No. 11 in John Peel's 1996 Festive Fifty.

• The track and its video were later collected on *Oscillons from the Anti-Sun*, a retrospective box set covering Stereolab's EPs and singles.

• The song's childlike melody and retro presentation helped establish it as one of the band's more openly melodic and accessible tracks, while retaining their characteristic combination of vintage keyboards, layered vocals, and repetitive rhythms.