With their last album ‘ABC 123’, a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Helvetica typeface, it seemed as if To Rococo Rot were to follow their German forebears, the mighty Kraftwerk, celebrating the straight line in pursuit of joyous modernity. Sadly, with ‘Speculation’, their journey aboard the trans-Europe express to experimentalism seems to have been derailed. While the likes of ‘Away’ and ‘Ship’ trundle pleasantly along with an assortment of beeps and whirrs, it takes an appearance from Faust’s Jochen Irmler on the eerie chimes of ‘Friday’ to help ‘Speculation’ move from tuneful to testing. Too bad they couldn’t have made a similar Faustian pact for the rest of the record.
Ben Hewit
Click here to get your copy of To Rococo Rot’s ‘Speculation’ from the Rough Trade shop