Amateur View [Import]

Amateur View [Import]

Track Listings

1. I Am In The World With You

2. Telema

3. Prado

4. Little Asphalt Here And

5. This Sandy Piece

6. Tomorrow

7. Greenwich

8. Cars

9. She Loves Animals

10. Die Dinge Des Lebens

11. Das Blau Und Der Morgen

12. Telema (Langs)

13. Even-

14. Cars (Variant)

15. Rocket Fuel

16. Casper

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Japanese Version featuring a Bonus Track.

Tracks:

I Am In The World With You
Telema
Prado
A Little Asphalt Here And There
This Sandy Piece
Tomorrow
Greenwich
Cars
She Loves Animals
Die Dinge Des Lebens
Das Blau Und Der Morgen

Amazon.com's Best of 1999

This German trio with an arty palindrome for a moniker makes playful, organic music that falls somewhere between experimental techno and "postrock." Like their forebears Kraftwerk, TRR do not use sequencers and computer gadgetry associated with modern electronic music. On this lovely, breakthrough disc, the group flavors their experimentation with bouncing melodies. --Mike McGonigal

Amazon.com

Track 8 on To Rococo Rot's The Amateur View has the nerve to borrow its title from Gary Numan's most famous song. Although their "Cars" isn't a cover of that "Cars," it manages to be every bit as catchy, turning a semaphore beep, a sing-song xylophone figure, and a watery six-note bass line into an unlikely pop confection. On the rest of the German trio's third album, they stick to what they usually stick to: a lulling update of the pastoral instrumentals created 25 years ago by their fellow countrymen Cluster. The result is an attempt to recreate the random beauty of nature in the realm of the unnatural. The 11 tracks on The Amateur View sound less composed than stumbled upon within the depths of the band's machines. It's as if To Rococo Rot, microphones and tape recorders in hand, simply happened upon the digital equivalent of birdcalls, burbling streams, and rustling leaves, then delivered to your stereo system the Y2K version of an Environments record. If you've never had the patience for nature walks, it'll probably seem like a bore. But if flora and fauna are your idea of a good time, check out the new wilderness. --Jeff Salamon

Customer Reviews:

Unremarkable.......2001-10-26

As a bona fide electronica buff, I really wanted to like this album having heard so may good things about it. To me, however, this was a major disappointment. It's perfectly listenable, but a bit too cheesey, predictable and well...Euro for my taste. It's competent but falls short of being remarkable, inspring, or intriguing. Its all a matter of taste, of course. No doubt many of you will love this: it's just not original or adventurous enough to stick out from the crowd.

Excellent CD.......2001-02-21

This CD is great, just about every song is worth listening to. "Cars" is one of the most popular for a good reason. My personal favorites are "This Sandy Piece" and "Die Dinge Des Lebens". I don't have any idea what that second title means, but its a great song.

To Rococo Rot - The amateur view.......2000-11-28

Si bien este disco de To Rococo Rot podría enmarcarse dentro del ámbito de la música electrónica (aunque también algo al post-rock), debido al uso de ese tipo de instrumentos, su mayor mérito consiste en desviarse de ciertos odiosos parámetros de ese estilo, como la monotonía. Justamente, en este disco podemos agradecer la presencia de canciones de una duración moderada, en las que hay un buen uso de las progresiones y dinámicas, donde aparecen quiebres y variaciones y donde existe un buen rango de variedad en los tempos (que, sin embargo, no llegan a ser tan neuróticos y machacantes como el house, ni tan difusos y etéreos como el ambient). Por otro lado, el uso de instrumentos análogos, como el bajo y las percusiones, contribuye a darle más "humanidad" (y menos aritmética) a lo que escuchamos, creando una ambiente, si bien algo cibernético, bastante cálido. Además, hay un inteligente y armónico uso de la superposición de voces, ya sean éstas ruidos (naturales o eléctricos), acordes sostenidos o melodías propiamente tales. Lo que podemos oír, en consecuencia, es un grupo que no se queda en la autocomplacencia de la electrónica, dedicándose a disfrutar de los sonidos que producen y combinarlos sin ocupar mayormente su sensibilidad. Por el contrario, aquí se puede disfrutar de mucha melodiosidad y de emociones que van desde la seriedad a cierta diversión y hasta el romanticismo.

P.D.: recomiendo escuchar, en una línea similar, al grupo inglés Black Dog.

Definitely One of the Best in the Genre.......2000-08-26

The first thing i wanna say is... they produced for Saint Etienne! The match is perfect, 'The Sound of Water' is simply the best SE album EVER! To Rococo Rot are geniuses, really! Seemingly, this is just some bleeping sound, no big deal, lots of Warp bands have done that before. However, if you really pay attention to the soundscape of the album, you will find that they have actually achieved something nobody has done before, they pushed the boundary of post-ambient music ever further. I know terminology bores these artists, but this is ground-breaking. Althogh this lot hails from Germany, they are clearly influenced by Mouse on Mars, you cannot really say they are a Krautrock band or a post-rock band though. Maybe they are an avant garde chill-out band. Like Air, they injected a warmth into the cool electronic sound they created, combining the synthetic with the organic, this is what you get. At times, this is playful, however, this gives different feelings as the music flows on. Buy it now!

Music to woo your computer.......2000-05-16

Plonks, Blips, and beeps, these are the sounds of To Rococo Rot, but instead of the usual programmed whonkery they make a beautiful, warm brand of techno. This is the melancholy music your computer would listen to as the sun sets. Or these days, the soundtrack to a VW Beetle ad.