Taken From Vinyl

Compiling material from EPs and compilations released between 1996 and 2004, Taken From Vinyl serves as a neat precis of what To Rococo Rot were busying themselves soon after their formation, on into the new century. They’ve long been a group interested in variation, their material often feeling modular, snapped-together, pulled out of their kit across open-ended rehearsal and studio sessions. Here, the trio of Lippok, Lippok and Schneider try their hand at ambient abstraction (the whirring Chroma key drift of “Days Between Stations,” a collaboration with artist Natascha Sadr-Haghighian), mantric pop (the glorious “Telema”), muted Chain Reaction-esque thud (“Mit Dir In Der Gegend”) and plenty more. The consistency comes from the trio’s shared language, both musical and extra-musical, the way they move as one, and the continual sense of the music being about to stretch beyond its limits and reach for something entirely other.