November 7, 1998

TRR+D

...Cheery mutual appreciation and a melding of mind and spirit are the normal friendly benchmarks for artistic collaboration....

7 / 10 SUDDENLY, THERE'S A NOISE FROM THE CARGO hold. Looking up nervously from their dots and loops to where the air vents rattle, To Rococo Rot see the tentacles of D slowly emerging through the silver grills. "Quick," whisper the Lippock brothers, stuffing tapes under their pristine white lab coats, "flee..."

Cheery mutual appreciation and a melding of mind and spirit are the normal friendly benchmarks for artistic collaboration. One band drooling corrosive slime from their mouths and lurking, predator-like, in the pipework while the other tries to protect their Very Important Electronica Experiments is a largely unexplored dynamic. This is Tuneraider 3, battled out in a tense and murky world of eccentric obsession, an expert exercise in infra-red musical stalking. While To Rococo Rot's endless Jacob's ladder grooves remain clean and translucent, their palindromic meandering is brutally truncated by the monosyllabic D. So the springy, Plone-like prettiness of 'As Compasses Go' is weighted by an evil hum, while the jump-cut flicker and click of 'Copa' and 'Bei Allem Was Du Machst' crawl into your inner ear to nest, scratching at your skull with unpleasant intimacy.

...You never hear them scream.