To Rococo Rot - Hotel Morgen

  by Anthony Dhanendran

published: 15 / 8 / 2004

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This is a moving album. Not in the emotional sense – there’s nothing here that will stir you to tears, whether of sorrow, elation or even boredom. It’s an album about motion, though – the movement of people, the defining practice of our times. Hotels are integral to our movements across countries and continents, whether they are five-star palatial towers or tiny, run-down motels off a dusty road. But what does that have to do with music? Well, this is Music for Travellers. With their tenth year and fifth album, To Rococo Rot have got interested in where we are and how we got there. 'Hotel Morgen' is an attempt to lay some of that down in music and at the same time return to their self-stated goal of melding art-school experimental sensibilities with the “accessibility and use-value of pop”. And does it work? At first listen, it’s hard to tell. Tracks float by as you listen, not stopping to carry the listener along with them. The music is more accessible than their earlier sound, but most of the time, listening to it, it can be hard to get hold of a hook. To Rococo Rot's 'Hotel Morgen' is obviously a lonely place, soundtracked as it is by a kind of watered-down electro/post-rock music. Much of this sounds like the kind of thing that may have soundtracked a fast-moving 1980's German art-film portrait of life on the Autobahn, or the driving sequence in a British film of the same time, if the director was aiming for the edgy, faux-futuristic feel that, at the time, actually seemed futuristic. It’s a warm album, though, grounded as it is in 1980's sensibilities, when the relative scarcity of samplers meant that electronic music was warmer, more natural than it can now be. The bass and drums on these pieces are certainly a product of, if not genuine early electronic instruments, then very good copies thereof. That’s what ultimately saves 'Hotel Morgen' from boredom – the craft that has clearly gone into the making of it. While much of it may pass you by, parts of it seep into the brain as you doze, and with each listen, new sub-strands make themselves apparent. It may not be the 'Hotel Yorba' or 'Hotel Morrison', but 'Hotel Morgen' isn’t such an unwelcoming place in which to spend some time.

Track Listing:-

1 Dahlem
2 Cosimo
3 Tal
4 Feld
5 Portrait Song
6 Sol
7 Plong
8 Miss You
9 Basic
10 Venus
11 Non Song
12 Ovo
13 Bologna
14 Opak

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