The Amateur View cover

The Amateur View

Released

On The Amateur View, To Rococo Rot go pop, but in their own, understated way. If their music has always tended toward the methodical and formal, The Amateur View is notable for the joyousness of its pop moments, with the tinker-toy melodies of “Cars” and the sleek, chromatic phrases of “Telema”, the two singles from the album, gifting the album a faded elegance. The sheer loveliness of much of the material here is hard to resist: “Die Dinge Des Lebens” is as blearily woozy as the best of Fennesz; “Tomorrow” is urgent, compulsive; “This Sandy Piece”, a collaboration with Darryl Moore aka D, is spaced-out and glistening. There’s also something in much of The Amateur View that gestures towards dub as practice but not genre, with the music full of canny dropouts, hinting at ghost tones and effaced lines, songs as palimpsests. It still feels like their most fully realised, potent set.

Jon Dale

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