To Rococo Rot and I-Sound - Music is a Hungry Ghost
(Mute)
To Rococo Rot's new album enlists the help of New York City DJ I-Sound, and while
I-Sound adds little more than blips, bumps, and beeps as texture to the songs, such
a thick bed of sound is created, that it totally changes the tone of To Rococo
Rot's music. To Rococo Rot's music ranges from pure dance groove (1997's Veiculo) to
pure pop sunrise (1999's The Amateur View), but the consistently warm tone has been present
throughout. That warm tone is still there in this collaboration, but when juxtaposed against a cold,
sometimes harsh urban soundscape as created by I-Sound, the music takes a much darker
tone. While The Amateur View may have been ideal music for 7 or 8 AM, the band's
new album, Music is a Hungry Ghost, is better suited for 3 AM.
Some songs sound much more like the creation of a DJ Shadow-like turntablist than
German electro-nicks. "Pantone" starts with a piano solo mixed with bursts of
machine gun-like drum machine beats that may trick one into thinking this is just a
DJ Shadow tribute album. Much like Shadow, the other bits of the song come in
intermittently. However, when the main synth melody arrives, it takes over the
song, turning it into more of an electronic pop song, more similar to To Rococo
Rot's previous material. Other songs are pure soundscapes. "Your Secrets, a Few
Words" is almost industrial in sound, with the static and rattle of machines
and a series of futuristic wooshing sounds. "First" is your standard
space soundscape, starting as a solitary pulse in a wide spectrum-sucking vacuum
before a structure enters, creating a clanging, overwhelming sound.
The groove is still there in abundance, though, it is just more often used in tandem
with noise and beats than its usual marquee presence. "How We Never Went to Bed" (see what
I mean about 3 AM) is a dirty, dirty Stefan Schneider bass groove that gets down in
your pants, spreads itself all around your underwear, and starts to jiggle and move,
taking control of your body from groin outwards. "The Trance of Travel" ends the
album with a similar effect, starting a Veiculo-style bass groove that just doesn't
quit, and letting it carry the song for five minutes. Its groove is soft and swaying, like
the perfect soundtrack for a new millennium black private dick to stroll the streets
to. "From Dream to Daylight" is another song more similar to To Rococo Rot's previous
work, except for that the main melodies are created by the sound of guitar and violin,
creating a gentle, lulling tone. Also wonderful is "Overhead" which starts as a
soundscape built under one amorphous blob of sound before interesting percussion
fills the sound, and a groove eventually forms and decays.
It's interesting that the recent re-release of Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock occurred
at approximately the same time as the release of this record. There you have urban culture looking
to Germany for inspiration, creating a wonderful sound without which numerous groups,
like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, may never have existed. Here we have a direct
collaboration between one of the more interesting current German bands and an obscure New
York City DJ. Are they as effective at creating a new sound as Bambaataa was? There
is a certain amount of innovation in their combination of a live electronic band with a
turntabilist, but there also seems to be an imbalance. I-Sound seems to be confined
in his creativity, yet several times he is allowed to dominate the sound. Music is
a Hungry Ghost creates an interesting gritty and urban sound from the foundation of
something that was hardly gritty and not really that type of urban. In the end, perhaps
all they are really doing is repeating what Afrika Bambaataa did, only in reverse, letting
the turntables spice up the electronics.
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