Review of ABC123 Album by To Rococo Rot

To Rococo Rot
ABC123
Album Sampler

To Rococo Rot ABC123 Album

Having been left a little unsatisfied by this sketchy, very brief CD (eight tracks in under 20 minutes) from well-established Berlin types, I was pleased to discover that it's a taster for a full-length album next year. A bit odd, that. Would you get a book reviewer to give you their thoughts on a few lines culled from each chapter, from which the plot is indistinct and the characters barely hinted at? Probably not, but that's what writing about this CD feels like - little tastes of something a lot bigger.

I'd like the record to state that it's all very electronic. 'freitag' has a Teutonic son-of-Kraftwerk funkiness, the drum machine on 'lvx 4' sounds very motorik-heartbeat promising, 'post reprise' doesn't do much but the noise in the background like someone shaking a jar of pennies is good, 'verscheiden' has an inhuman throb to it, 'abc' sounds like a few machines having a chat, 'zigue zague' has a nice lilt to it, 'enigma' sounds a bit by numbers, and 'h5' sounds like David Sylvian tuning every single one of his enormous collection of cymbals.

Where these ideas go, how they develop? Anybody's guess.

Jon Watson


site - http://www.myspace.com/torococorot

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