Tone Rec / To Rococo Rot - “Coucy Pack Démoli” Substancia 2 2000 Techno / Glitch / Post-Rock
France’s Tone Rec and Germany’s To Rococo Rot were two groups of a similar mindset. Both had a definitively quiet experimental post-rock streak to them and they both liked incorporating techno elements into their sound. This genre blending attracted a diverse audience of indie hipsters and offbeat electronic music junkies alike.
So it’s no wonder that To Rococo Rot remixed one of Tone Rec’s songs in 2000 on the latter’s Demo Pack Démoli mini-album. That same song also appeared on Belgian label Quatermass’ Substancia 2 sampler that same year.
Two quotes about To Rococo Rot particularly stick out in order to get a real feel for what they were all about. From an introduction to an interview in The Quietus, John Freeman’s friend Stephen describes their sound in just one sentence:
Although they were coming from a techno angle, they had real melody and colour that I found missing in a lot of other techno music.
Sean Cooper in AllMusic delves more into their ethos:
The group described its work as an overt attempt to reconnect the art-school proclivities of musical experimentalism with the accessibility and “use-value” of pop, a goal clearly evident in their name and their recorded output.
There’s not many write-ups about Tone Rec, but the apparent difference between them and To Rococo Rot is that To Rococo Rot put importance on building atop melodies whereas Tone Rec were more into glitchy IDM constructions.
Those differences come to light in “Coucy Pack Démoli”. I’ve never heard the original mix, but one can infer each group’s contribution to the remix, besides the techno backbeat. To Rococo Rot provide the warm and repetitious, mechanical yet earthy, and slightly alternative poppy accordion and gong melody, while Tone Rec deliver all the glitching, bleeping, beeping, clicking, cutting, and other unpredictable and indescribable attributes atop it. The result is a blend of both groups’ musical specialties that yields something totally unique and interesting that you can either vibe or dance to.
A novel and dope turn of the century Euro composite of post-rock glitchiness and techno.