ROBERT LIPPOK
Redsuperstructure
RN134
Raster-Noton 2011
09 Tracks. 39mins36secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM

Robert Lippok steps out of his day job as one third of To Rococo Rot for his third solo outing, following his debut, Falling Into Komëit (Monika Enterprise) in 2004 and the mini-album that followed, Robot (Western Vinyl) two years later.

Redsuperstructure stems from a live set Lippok gave at Raster-Noton’s Electric Campfire in Rome last year. There’s very little of the Krautrock influences which have informed much of the TRR catalogue over the years. Instead, Lippok opts here for crisp electronic structures which he arranges into compact sonic vignettes. Continue Reading »

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Monika Bärchen: Songs for Bruno, Knut and Tom
Monika60
Monika Enterprise 2008
15 Tracks. 54 mins 44 secs

As the adage goes, wherever you bite a stick of rock, the word inside it is the same. And so it goes with this birthday prize of a compilation – wherever you look, the same eye-widening sense of newness and fun is on show. This tenth anniversary package of the German Monika Enterprise label is, perhaps unsurprisingly, not really what you would expect. Rather than resurrecting hip, effortless tracks that passed unnoticed a decade ago, Gut here brings together a collection of entirely new songs, all by long-time Monika stable-mates. But the intriguing thing is that, on first listen, this really does sound like a best-of in the worthiest sense – an album of career-defining classics. From Capri Sun electro guitar pop to underground polka techno, everything here just seems to fit.

It is a liberating album as much as anything else – one that, in just fifteen songs, sums up the casual, effervescent daring of the label itself. Continue Reading »