Additional personnel includes: Duma Love (vocals, percussion, beat box, scratches); Marc Ribot (acoustic & electric guitars); Smokey Hormel (acoustic guitar); Dave Douglas (trumpet); Josh Roseman, Curtis Fowlkes (trombone); John Medeski (Clavinet); Yumiko Ohono (Moog synthesizer, background vocals); Sebastian Steinberg (bass); Dougie Bowne (hi-hat, cymbals); Billy Martin (percussion).

Engineers include: Chris Shaw, Tom Schick, Martin Bisi.

Recording information: Magic Shop; Sear Sound Studios, New York, NY; Studio 4.

The giddy ball of fun known as Cibo Matto grooves harder than ever on STEREOTYPE A. It seems as if girl-doll frontwomen Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori want to offer something a little grittier than the sugary sweets of albums past, and it shows--Japanese bubble gum this is not. Instead, the band offers a thoughtful, texturally rich urban soundtrack for the pre-millennium, with rough beats raining down harmoniously alongside staccato horn lines and slow 'n easy dreamscapes.

Whimsical weirdness hasn't been entirely forsaken, however. "Sci-Fi Wasabi" knocks along to Star Wars samples with the girls dropping rhymes about potholes, Obi Wan and NYC avenues. Miho is found squawking out lines like "Pass the Volvic!" "Lint Of Love" sports perhaps the nastiest beats of the lot, with spacey organ and bandmember Sean Lennon offering his boyish pipes and scurfy guitar fills. "Moonchild" and "Sunday Part II" are sweetness itself with their lovely vocal harmonies and simple, childlike lyrics.