Kölner Brett cover

Kölner Brett

Released

To Rococo Rot appear interested in useful music – not utilitarian, exactly, or ambient, but music with purpose. Kölner Brett is a particularly extreme example of this, being a musical translation of the titular building, which, the liners note, “blends living and working in each of its single units”. Architectural grace is something To Rococo Rot do ‘naturally’, anyway, so they fit the brief perfectly; each of the twelve pieces, coming in at almost exactly three minutes each, sets one idea, or pattern, or cycle, into motion and lets it play out, with gentle variations, over the piece’s timespan. It has some relationships with minimal techno – you can hear echoes of the abstract patterning of Wolfgang Voigt’s M:I:5 project in here, at times – but each of the Kölner Brett compositions are habitable, and quite humble, in their own way.

Jon Dale

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