To Rococo Rot

Interviewed april 1997 by phone

Stefan Schneider of To Rococo Rot doesn't like electronic equipment too much. Stefan: 'Take for instance portable telephones. All those buttons, you need a manual as thick as a telephone directory to be able to just dial a number.' Strange for a band which for one half seems rooted in the world of electronic music.

Stefan is the only one of the threepiece who is a bit set back by electronic equipment. In the studio though he diverts his fears and he sees the machines as fully-fledged instruments. Stefan: 'In the studio we use a limited number of instruments. Computers, samplers and synthesizer give you such endless possibilities that in the end you get limited in the things you can do. Especially if you have to take time to learn and use such an instrument, that can put a break on the creative process.' To Rococo Rot make music without any preconcieved ideas or plans. Stefan: 'We just go into the studio and create music on the spot by improvising. But not from a jazz point of view, it's more like remixing, take a certain structure and tear it apart and putting it back together again in another order. In the studio we do things as fast as possible, so nothing of the spontaneity gets lost.' To Rococo Rot become known in a time that so many bands arise from a twilight between rock and techno. A comparison with the common point of reference in this twilight which some name "post-rock", Tortoise is easily made. Stefan: 'I don't see that comparison at all. We come from a totally different background. I have met Robert and Ronald (the brothers Lippok, the former a DJ, the latter a drummer) in East-Berlin, where Robert used to play records at clubs in a way I have never seen before. His DJ-set didn't consist of only playing records, but he completely disected them and mixed them with samples and other rhythm tracks. I invited him over to come and play in Dusseldorf, but in the end he wasn't able to come and asked me to play with him on a record. That's when To Rococo Rot was born.' To Rococo Rot doesn't want to be lumped in to the same group as the American rockbands who started to use other instruments out of experiment. They are part though of another phenomena; since a year or two more and more German experimentalists and electronic bands seem to arise from nowhere, among them Mouse on Mars, Mike Ink, Funkstorung and the work by lables like Hausmuzik, Payola, Kollapz and Mille Plateaux. Stefan: 'Surprising yeah, but I had seen it coming. A lot of these people have been making music since the end of the eighties and they did release their early experiments through the tape-circuit that was around for a while in the German underground. Recently a music journalist started calling it the "adult" scene, because everyone is around thirty or in their late twenties. They have waited long before they were confident enough to try it.' That's what also happened to To Rococo Rot. Next to the activities in this project Stefan also plays guitar with Kreidler, a band which has a sound not too far a way from To Rococo Rot and Ronald plays in an East-Berlin band called Tarwater. How did an electronic oriented band like To Rococo Rot end up on a guitarlabel like City Slang? Stefan: 'Oh, Robert lives in the same building where the label is located and he walked into them regularely. We feel at home here. City Slang has much confidence in us and let us do what we like. That gave us a lot of freedom.' So much freedom that To Rococo Rot is planning to do a lot of things coming year, next to the last record "Veiculo", two soundtracks, a new record "Paris 25", colaborations with the art academy in Dusseldorf and various concerts throughout Europe in June 1997.