R.O.C
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R.O.C

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The best kept secret in music

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"Night Fold Around Me"

Night Fold Around Me (album) reviewed by Andrew Eaton, The Scotsman 9/6/06

A FASCINATING cult oddity, ROC spent the 1990s making two brilliant but willfully uncommercial albums that were all over the place stylistically, mixing occasional Saint Etienne-style dreamy pop with relentless eight-minute instrumentals and unremittingly bleak ballads full of swearing. If that made them a tough sell, their attitude didn't help - their own label, Setanta, wrote an open letter to the music industry branding them egotistical (Virgin released their next album anyway). Ironically, the trio have now made their most accessible album. This is a terrific collection of lush, intelligent electro pop full of beauty, tempered optimism (the quietly anthemic Sink a Bite into Life) and gallows wit. Princess is a hoot - a love song that proclaims "everything's gonna be fine" despite "all the torture and the maiming and the horror and the raping and the slaughter and the pain". Not for everyone, but oddly life-affirming.4/5 - The Scotsman


"Night Fold Around Me"

Night Fold Around Me (album) reviewed by John Robinson, Q 7/06

In the late-'90s, ROC, like Underworld, tapped into an interesting dance/guitar hybrid. What held them back commercially, however, was not necessarily their music but their attitude. Indeed their own label, Setanta, deemed them to have "an ego out of proportion to any real achievements" and issued a statement saying that. Nonetheless, artistically the trio remained an intriguing fringe concern, and this belated third album sees that continuing. Urban paranoia and moody melody is what they do best, while their efforts at making pop songs out of what sound like miserable life experiences come off as well.3/5 - Q


"Princess"

Princess (single) reviewed by Davina Earl, Gigwise.com,6/15/05
At first it appears as though R.O.C seem to think they're just a little bit cleverer than they really are. Don't get us wrong, 'Princess' is good, but it's not that good. It could be better. In fact it would be if it was prefixed with "hello" and sung in the style of Dirty Den serenading piggy faced Sharon. That would have been a nice touch. As it stands we have a bitter-sweet ode for those days when you just want to forget the worries of the world, kick back and get drunk. Fred sings: "So let the bombs drop and all the guns shoot and the children all burn while the population loots - because that's all happening a million miles away and nothing's going to spoil our perfect day." Half light, half dark; it makes you feel relaxed and uncomfortable, reassured and disturbed all at the same time. Hmm, R.O.C were right all along, they really are musical smart-arses. Bravo! - Gigwise.com


"Virgin"

Virgin (album) reviewed by John Perry, NME 13/9/97

Bloody hell. Ickle birdy-wirdies cheep and chirp on the run in groove, lulling you into a very false sense of security because something wicked this way comes. It's big, it's bad, it's 'Dada', a roaring, spluttering combine-harvester of a track, a piston disco beat driven by giggling madmen. Then ROC follow that with.

'(Dis)count Us In', a gurgling, spring-heeled summer groove like Lionrock on holiday. Wow. Whatever next? That'll be 'Mountain', a Velvelty slice of Screamadelics with singer Karen whispering honeyed vocals from a swinging hammock.

Ah, yes. Relax into the haphazard but beautiful world of 'Virgin', the Brixton trio's second album of brilliant moodswings. Because if ROC are coming from anywhere it's from all directions at once. ROC have swallowed the recent 'hey, Kids! It's Ok To Like Oasis And The Prodigy At The Same Time' attitude whole, but unlike most bands who say 'you can't pigeonhole us, man', ROC are genuinely like nothing else at all. And everything all at once. Ooh, me 'ead 'urts.

OK, it's not all jaw-dropping innovation. '25 Reasons To Leave Me' sounds like a stoned Edwyn Collins drowning in jelly. And for all its Blue Velvet menace, 'Dead Pool' does sound a bit like Nine Inch Nails. Oops.

But 'Cheryl' is popped-in trip-hop with style, 'KC' is a lovely folky strum like Everything But The Girl down a well (not before time, cheers) and the dreamy 'Ocean and England' will melt you into a shimmering puddle. Genre-surfing is a dangerous business, but ROC have an impeccable sense of balance. And some really loud shirts. Like, radical, dude. (7/10) - NME


"(Dis)count Us In"

(Dis)count Us In (single) - reviewed by Dannii Minogue with Neil Mason, Melody Maker 21/9/97

(Single of the Week)

Mason : Mere weeks away from an album chocka-block with quality grooves and piles of sounds comes the single, "(Dis)count Us In". And lo, what a fine silver surfer it is. Sample piled upon sample, a hypnotic, swirling groove, twangy guitar, whistleable refrains...if The Orb did funky, ROC would still be better.

Dannii : Oh yeah. This is very relaxed, really chilled out. I like things which are kind of hypnotic and this has got the groove, hasn't it? And it's immediate too. Fantastic. - melody maker


"ROC"

ROC (album) - reviewed by David Bennun, Melody Maker 6/1/96

For some reason, Calvin Klein's advertisers have taken to re-screening those laughable Kate Moss clips featuring the Croydon sylph's own voice-over:"Betwayn lav and madness luys - osbeshun." Maybe it's ingrained prejudice on my part, but this doesn't convey much to me in the way of mystique. And anyway, they got it wrong, because between love and madness lies the ROC album, stretching out to touch both at once.

The nearest comparison I can think of: Swell, a band so lost in delirium I sometimes wonder if they exist at all. ROC are more tangible, but no less head-spinning. I think I'm in love with them, whoever they are, because they know me so well. And you. They understand you, too. You've never met but they have read your mind. In the moments when you stop thinking, or when your thoughts pass beyond reason, in your red mist, your grisly loneliness or your sensual bliss, ROC are there, unseen, sequinning your skin with electrodes fed directly into their tape machine.

ROC operate in regions where language holds no sway(I say! Ed). Their lyrics are neither wry nor telling. They have no quick intelligence, no devastating powers of analysis. They are impressionists. Certain painters would portray a country field as a shock of violent, morbid colour, or a pavement cafe as a constellation fallen to earth, not because they could, but because that is simply what they saw. At first, each of ROC's recorded abstractions has no obvious meaning, but an unmistakeable feeling. As the album progresses, the themes become clearer. That's an understatement. In truth, they get picked out in black marker and illuminated by floodlights(I say! Ed). "Clouds", for instance, is hard to misinterpret as anything but the virulent resentment of a jilted partner, but no less forceful for that. "Dear Nicky", twelve tracks in, is a sprained love duet startling in its directness amid the general psychoactive miasma. Smothered in echo, it's like a teen girl edition of Dylan and The Band's hankering "Katie's Been Gone", which can only be a good thing. The sole flat moment in over an hour arrives as a totally unnecessary take on the evangelical Country & Western joke, "Plastic Jesus".

The songs are charged with curious emotions, not quite universal enough to have become cliches. The placid, almost resigned despair in "Desert Wind", the opening track, is unnerving in its prettiness. The sensation of taking pleasure in someone else's unwanted pain is disquieting, and this is a very disquieting album through and through. Paradoxically, the pure fury of "Excised" or the libidinous snarls of "Hey You Chick" make much easier listening than the quiet but tortured "I Want You I Miss You I Need You".

One of ROC's favourite conceits is the spoken monologue set in a musical fog (Swell again, but so what?). "Thirteen Summers" is "Little Fluffy Clouds" laid flat on the psychiatrist's couch - softer going than the surgical details on "Asencion". But, as with the other tracks, the words dissolve; English as a foreign language. The idea of meaning, the possibility of meaning, becomes meaningless. It's a journey through the id, proof that Freud was wrong. There are no maps, no patterns, and there may even be no other side, no exit.

Fortunately, CDs are finite, even if the mind is not. "ROC" gives you a window into self-made purgatory. You wouldn't want to live there. But you do. - Melody Maker


"White Stains"

White Stains (single) - reviewed by David Toop, The Times(UK) 6/5/94

For the past few years I have been looking for computer software that would access and expound on certain names and subjects at a single keystroke. Huge amounts of time could be saved if the computer wrote slight variations, ad infinitum, but in the appropriate style, on themes such as the musical influence of the Velvet Underground and Kraftwerk.

Admittedly, such a labour-saving device would require near-human intelligence. Take R.O.C for example. If I write "unnerving narratives and alienated moods delivered in a singing voice which hovers in the blank spectrum of robotic beats and cheesy droning keyboards", then you shout: "Hah! Velvets, Kraftwerk."

But R.O.C's music will only remind you of their inspirations in the most oblique fashion. For the new release, this London-based quintet have released an EP of four tracks (or, more accurately, one song in a sequence of different versions). Just to compound the mystery of who they are and what they are all about, the lead song shares a title with one of the most notorious literary works of that notorious magician, Aleister Crowley.

"White Stains", Karen Sheridan sings, "that I have shed for you." When Crowley published his book in 1898, it was described as "the most disgusting piece of erotica in the English language." Contemporary standards of disgust not being the same, this criticism will not be directed at R.O.C. Besides, says Fred Braunen, R.O.C's lynchpin, theirs is a song about Persil. Without question, there is some kind of biological action taking place in this music. How healthy it is I cannot say. - The Times


"God Willing"

God Willing (single) - reviewed by Dazed and Confused, 1/96

If it was the only record they ever made it would still put them in the top 50 British bands ever. - Dazed and Confused


"Journey to the Centre of Brixton"

Journey to the Centre of Brixton (single) reviewed by Mark Barton, Losing Today.com 27/02/06

If memory serves me right this little beauty scraped into the recent One Music Festive 50 that BBC Radio 1 broadcast over Xmas which in itself was an achievement given that it had only been officially out for a few days. 'Journey to the Centre of Brixton' is, it has to be said, a right royal corking release. Those most casual of visitors to these pages may well remember us falling over ourselves with the ensembles last release 'Princess' where the moulding of baggy tuneage of yore (Paris Angels, World of Twist et al) was teased and ticked into a superbly summer loving soundtrack. This time the mood is measured considerably, less immediate than 'Princess' though nonetheless equally engaging and something which lovers of the Broadway Project may well cock a celebratory ear to. 'Journey to the Centre of Brixton' is marked by it's underlying tension, darkly spun and richly executed albeit with an unmistakeable brooding edge at it's core, 5 mixes set across various formats - enough in fact to legitimately consider starting up a new record collection run for and featuring the first use that we can recall of London underground tube samples that I've heard since the Jam's 'Down in the Tube station at Midnight' way back nearly 30 years ago now. First up the studio version - a rough and hectic conglomeration of jostling broken beats and night air cooled bleakly chilled atmospherics, intensely fraught and sparsely dislocated to the feel. If anything 'Journey to the Centre of Brixton' owes much to the mid 90's Bristol scene amid the congested spectacle the superbly sensual vocal of Karen Sheridan hovers spectrally maintaining an illusion of steely calm that ultimately you feel loses something in translation listened to through headphones and would be best served out in a spacious club environment in order to achieve it full damage like potential. Better equipped for the task is the 'live version', making far better use of the space it colours in all the greyed out bits that where seemingly present on the 'studio' cut adding a sense of completeness and vibrancy that was lacking before by smoothing the edges and sharply pitching the intensity level downwards. Also featured here are three additional remixes from some of the industry's most in demand names. The Spartan mix provided for by Chicago's Oh Astro cleverly assumes a different perspective to the proceedings that injects an air of loneliness over a shuffling moving train dynamic all the time layered succulently as though transmitting from the ether shards of unworldly grace driven like symphonic overtures. Bullet Proof Sounds adopt a tonally more psychedelically enhanced edge to coat the mix with a heavy load bearing hypnotic head tripping effect yet for me personally it's the Ollo mix that shines brightest. Combining an after dark down tempo vibe with glacially dipped softly trod crunchy beats, Ollo ushers a sense of sophistication and torch light majesty to the chassis that strangely enough fans of d_rradio may find something of a curious treat, stripping the original of it's hustle and bustle and equipping into its place a delicately lilting and contemplative subtle cosmic sound-scape. Very classy stuff all aid and done. www.12-apostles.com - Losing Today.com


"Soviva"

Soviva (single) reviewed by Sharon O'Connell, Time Out 21/7/99

Alterno-pop faves return after several ice-ages with a slow-building, twisted treasure that pumps a New-Order bassline, lush strings and a disturbingly cracked vocal into The Clash's "Lost In The Supermarket" and comes up trumps. Again. - Time Out


Discography

ALBUMS:
1. "ROC"
Released1/96 on Setanta Records (UK&Europe), Bar None (USA)
Catalogue numbers SETCD22/SETMC22

2. "Virgin"
Released 9/97 on Virgin Records (world)
Catalogue numbers CDV2829/TCV2829

3. "Night Fold Around Me"
Released 6/2006 on 12 Apostles (world)
Catalogue number APCD01

SINGLES (selected - for full list please see www.rocmusic.com)

1. "Hey You Chick"
Released 9/96 on Virgin Records
Catalogue numbers VSCDT1608/VST1608

Radio: BBC Radio1 UK
Press: NME single of the week
TV: Video TOTP2 (BBC 2)

2.(Dis)count Us In
Released 8/97 on Virgin Records
Catalogue numbers VSCDT1644/VSCDX1644

Radio: BBC Radio1 UK
Press: Melody Maker single of the week

3. "Cheryl"
Released 4/97 on Virgin Records
Catalogue numbers VSCDT1620

Radio: playlist, Jo Whiley single of the week, both BBC Radio1 UK
Press: Melody Maker single of the week

4. "Princess"
Released 6/05 on 12 Apostles
Distributed by cargo
Catalogue number ROC15

Radio: BBC 6music Evening Sequence single of the week

5. "Journey to the Centre of Brixton"
Released 12/05 on 12 Apostles
Distributed by Cargo Records UK
Catalogue numbers AP05/AP55

Radio: BBC Radio1 (UK)
Press: Playlouder.com 2005 Readers Poll Top 50 singles

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

New album "Night Fold Around Me"
released June 2006 on 12 Apostles
http://www.12-apostles.com/index.htm

Q: "Urban paranoia and moody melody is what they do best...the trio remain an intriguing concern and this belated third album sees that continuing" 3/5
http://www.rocmusic.com/images/roc_q_jun06.jpg

The Scotsman:"a terrific collection of lush, intelligent electro pop full of beauty, tempered optimism and gallows wit" 4/5
http://www.rocmusic.com/images/ROCscotsman.jpg

new-noise.net: "Dreamy touches, stealthy beats and a very welcome sense of not knowing exactly what they've been listening to"
http://www.new-noise.net/list_676.html

Copacetic Zine:"there's a real earnestness and honesty on display here, and I couldn't help but be embraced by its charms."
http://www.copacetic-zine.com/music/roc.php"

Praised in the press by Radiohead and Orbital, UK/US trio ROC have confounded and delighted critics and fans since their first releases, underground classics like "God Willing" and "Girl With A Crooked Eye". They ransack everything from pure noise to pure pop, combining idiosyncratic male/female vocals, sound effects and straight instruments to reflect modern urban complexity more fully than their tradrock peers.

"if the prospect of a pillar-to-post ride through the post-modern gamut deosn't give you a nosebleed, then you and ROC deserve each other" (uncut).

ROC released their third album "Night Fold Around Me" in June 2006. It's the overdue follow-up to the widely-acclaimed "Virgin" (Virgin Records 1997) and their debut "ROC" (Setanta Records 1996). Accepting a Q best album award, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien said his vote would have gone to "Virgin".

The new album (on fast-rising London/Brooklyn label 12 Apostles) has been warmly received by UK press, and 2 singles have enjoyed strong radio support. "Princess" was BBC 6music's Evening Sequence Single of the Week. "Journey to the Centre of Brixton" had plays on Radio 1 and 6music. The tracks have been played on stations in USA, France, Germany, Seweden, Spain and Australia. A further single from the album "Sink A Bite Into Life" is planned, meanwhile a 12' remix of the track by Aussie electrobrat Dsico is currently topping UK club dj charts.

From their early singles the group was quickly labelled 'perverse' and 'uncategorisable' for their refusal to stick to a pre-ordained genre, instead viewing the whole of pop music as fair game for their ideas. While some viewed this as mere mischief, others realised ROC were attempting something more complex:

"be young, be British, parade some sickly indie variant of pop around the shop, watch your so-called career rise in times of chest-beating patriotism and then dip sharply when people come to their senses; alternatively take the ROC route and visit a Britain that is a more paranoid place that the Albion of their peers. ROC examine the true youth stories of our time: the long-term effects of hedonism, atomised, uncertain urban lives, boredom." (nme)

"their references are as broad as the Severn Bridge, from Velvet Underground to Phil Spector, DJ Shadow to Kraftwerk, kitsch rock to Europop, but that doesn't matter because ROC still make it sound like they're treading through virgin territory." (Melody Maker).

The early singles displayed a tendecy to black humour (still evident on the latest album). "Girl With A Crooked Eye" is a story of domestic violence on the Costa Del Sol, and "X-ine" contains the line "I hope you both get Aids". But with their first album "ROC" the group revealed a more personal side. Fred Browning and Karen Sheridan delivered forlorn breakup songs, screaming rants and self-loathing. But they still weren't beyond upbeat pop songs ("Hey You Chick!"), dreamy instrumentals and spoken word. They also let loose with all manner of sound effects, real answerphone messages from friends and lovers, taped conversations, fragments of tv and radio. "Excised" starts with a secret recording of a friend's wedding.

The "Virgin" album features "Dada", a techno-riot based around Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's infectious laugh, and "Said What I Said" which predated both Goldfrapp's electro-glam stomps and the UK's appetite for Jerry Springer-type TV shows. But these are again interposed with raw emotional material such as the closer "Ocean & England". Q magazine said: "it ends with a love song - now that is unsettling."

Although branded as pranksters, ROC's story is one of committed perseverance. They gained a 'difficult' reputation when their label wrote an open letter to the industry warning people against working with them; and while critics were celebrating their 'fuck-the-formula' approach, ROC were beyond the wit of marketing departments: two lead singers; too dance for rock/too rock for dance...

Despite rave reviews for their second album, Virgin dropped ROC during an executive meltdown. The group continued with three single releases, including "2000Mann" on ex-NME wri