To Rococo Rot: Music Is A Hungry Ghost : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Call it post-rock and you're likely to get floored by an intense, icy glare. But how else to classify music that emphasizes minimalism, sounds like it uses bouncing ping-pong balls as a primary source of percussion, and was conceived in a Berlin art gallery? After six years of staying within the walls of the maze laid out by Chicago peers like Toroise and Slint, however, on its fourth album To Rococo Rot takes a promising turn. Collaborating with New York DJ and musician I-Sound, the group relaxes its rigid Krautrock stance and lets seductive dub rhythms and elastic hip-hop beats infiltrate the main. The results work particularly well on beat-heavy compositions like "From Dream To Daylight" and "Overhead," but still suffer from a determination to bore the daylights out of the average listener. (AIDIN VAZIRI - May 7, 2001)