To Rococo Rot’s “The Amateur View”, one of the defining experimental albums of the late ‘90s, existing in its own vortex somewhere between post-rock, kraut-pop and glitchy electronic minimalism, newly reissued and expanded with 12 bonus cuts and loads of archival ephemera.

“The Amateur View” is the trio’s coolest, loungiest album; full of references to vintage new age music, early synth gear and the sultry lite-jazz library tomes that informed Stereolab, Broadcast’s debut and Air’s first couple of LPs. They were clearly of their time then, but not completely beholden to it; their muddle of ingredients is strikingly prescient. There’s a hint of Wolfgang Voigt’s GAS material in ‘Prado’, sampling Polish film composer Wojciech Kilar’s ‘Love Remembered’, cutting into its swollen strings with pattered live percussion and squelchy analogue cycles, while ‘Telema’ is a euphoric marvel that massages hopeful kosmische oscillations into hollow bontempi metronomics.

Maybe TRR’s most enduring moment is when they use a sample of Gigi Masin’s hallucinogenic new age cogitation ‘Clouds’ to anchor ‘Die Dinge des Lebens’, inspiring Björk’s later ‘Vespertine’ stand-out ‘It’s in Our Hands’ in the process. We can’t know for sure, but it’s hard to imagine the track would be sampled over 30 times subsequently, appearing in tracks from Main Attrakionz, Post Malone, Five Deez and NVSVR, if it wasn’t for To Rococo Rot.

The suite of additional tracks includes the b-sides from the ‘Cars’ EP; the “Längs” version of ‘Telema’ from the 10” single release; a handful of tracks from ‘TRRD’, the band’s collaboration with Soul Static Sound boss and Rough Trade legend Darryl Moore; and the ‘Pantone’ tracks from their ‘Music Is A Hungry Ghost’ album with i-sound.

To Rococo Rot “The Amateur View” (Expanded Edition 2025) is out now at City Slang and also available at boomkat.com.