EB Exclusive: Stream To Rococo Rot’s Album Instrument and Video for “Classify”

Last year, the trio of To Rococo Rot, consisting of brothers Robert and Ronald Lippok and Stefan Schneide, re-released three of their critically acclaimed early electronic/post-rock LPs, Veiculo, The Amateur View and Music is a Hungry Ghost via City Slang. Fatefully, No Wave pioneer and regular EB contributor Arto Lindsay reviewed them in our Winter 2012/13 issue of EB Mag, praising what he called their “. . . irreducible electronics: sounds you can’t break down into their component parts because their already subatomic.” It was no less than Lindsay’s review that then became the catalyst in bringing him together with the band to collaborate on TRR’s new album Instrument, and today we’re very proud to premiere the result(s).

In the video for “Classify”, a three-minute Paleozoic-themed gem, Lindsay and TRR turned to Orson and Pola Sieverding to help visualize the richness of their sound world in a series of slow shots of various sea life in a public aquarium (as well as reptiles in the neighboring terrarium.)

Lindsay also prominently features on two more tracks of TRR’s latest album, Instrument, which is their first ever (of 8) to feature what the band call “actual songs”—and certainly the first to feature any kind of vocal. The rich androgyny of Lindsay’s voice and refined production quality set instrument off into an interesting trajectory, in which TRR’s explorative tendencies are harnessed by a vocal guide. All in all: it sounds damned good, maybe our favorite City Slang release of the past year and a half.

And since we’re feeling generous, check out our Facebook to win 2 tickets for tomorrow’s To Rococo Rot show in Cologne. Don’t say we never gave you nothing.

Published July 14, 2014. Words by EB Team.