To Rococo Rot started out life in mid-'90s Berlin making soundtracks for art galleries, and history finds itself repeating with the latest outing for TRR bass player/knob-twiddler Stefan Schneider. Involved in another antagonistic trio in which each member brings their own particular ideas and ideals, here Schneider hooks up with electro-pop songsmith Barbara Morgenstern and Polish jazz-drummer-turned-minidisc-frier Paul Wirkus, as September Collective. The triumvirate got together in 2002 to compose songs for a series of exhibitions in Cologne, Wuppertal, and Düsseldorf; these compositions form their debut self-titled set, now released on the Pastels' fabulous Geographic imprint. The playful, sentimental, strangely beautiful electro-tonal songs herein are easily comparable to the tunes and tones contained on the latest record for the-busiest-man-in-Scottish-jazz Bill Wells, Pick Up Sticks. Given that that disc found both Schneider and Morgenstern collaborating with the swinging Scotsman, perhaps it — both the similarity and the comparison, really — is inevitable. Across this beautifully restrained 32-minute outing, September Collective trade in the gentlest, nicest, sweetest electro minimalism. "Gardna" is a prime candidate for such nice adjectives, a cut in which, in the midst of a milling mist of wishy-washy static, gorgeous keyboard chords and plaintive programming make for some surprisingly beautiful ambience,evoking some pastoral Polish common as Wirkus peaks static into cutesy ersatz bird-chirps that carol across the newly born morn.
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