Having announced in early 2009 that they would be embarking on an indefinite hiatus, Stereolab evidently aren’t quite finished with us yet. Drag City will release an album’s worth of new material from the band on November 16.

Entitled Not Music, the album will be releasd on CD and double vinyl. Its tracks – yet to be made public – have been culled from the fruitful sessions for the band’s last album, 2008’s Chemical Chords, and presumably will boast a similarly sunny, elaborately layered pop sound.

Not Music will be preceded on September 21 by an eagerly awaited solo album from Laetitia Sadier, who co-founded Stereolab and shared songwriting duties with Tim Gane as well as acting as the group’s de facto lead singer. This record, as yet untitled, will also be out via Drag City.

Stereolab are one of the most inventive and enduringly influential bands to have emerged from the England’s early 1990s underground, a troupe of Marxist vinyl junkies drawing upon a discerning range of influences – from Scott Walker to Nico, Raymond Scott to Steve Reich, Can to Burt Bacharach – and condensing them into a streamlined, electronics-savvy pop sound very much their own. The band collaborated with the likes of Nurse With Wound, Jim O’Rourke and Sean O’Hagan (The High Llamas), and operated the Duophonic label that provided a home for releases from the likes of Tortoise, Labradford and Broadcast. Their entire sprawling discography is worthy of your time, but the albums Mars Audiac Quintet (1994), Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996) and Dots And Loops (1997) deserve special attention.

More news on Not Music and Sadier’s solo LP when we have it.