Paul Sullivan chats to musicians To Rococo Rot about punk, electronica and growing up in East Berlin…

‘This was where the main bohemian scene used to be,” states Ronald Lippok, gesturing out of a large café window in the general direction of Kastanienallee. “When we were younger, playing in punk-rock bands, all the rehearsal spaces were around Schönhause Allee and here in Zionskirchplatz. This was the centre of the art scene in the 80s. Places like the Wiener café and the Metzer Eck (on Metzerstraße) were where you’d find punks and poets hanging out together…”

Myself, Ronald and his brother Robert are perched on stools in a café on Mitte’s Zionskirchplatz. It’s around two in the afternoon on a weekday, and the vibe is mellow, a few people reading newspapers or chatting across the venue’s wooden tables. Robert sips a coffee (black, no sugar), his brother pulls slowly on a beer. As well as similar facial features, they both sport the same lank hair and relaxed, unpretentious air of archetypal echte (real) Berliners.

I’ve met them before, the Lippoks, along with fellow band member Stefan Schneider (based in Düsseldorf) for an interview in their Kreuzberg studio, back in 1999. The trio had formed To Rococo Rot (a cunningly palindromic name, in case you hadn’t noticed) in 1995 and already achieved acclaim for their 1997 album Veiculo. They were about to release a new record, The Amateur View, which would transpire to be a landmark release for them, underlining the uniqueness of their lolloping, melodic Krautrock-meets-Post-Rock-meets-Brian-Eno sound.

Ten years later and they’re on the eve of putting out another album, Speculation. Partly recorded at Faust’s studio in southern Germany, the album is rawer than its predecessors yet equally hypnotic. It’s the first major recording since 2006’s acclaimed Hotel Morgen, though the delay doesn’t phase them in the slightest. ‘We’ve been busy with other projects,’ shrugs Robert, whose recent collaborations have included Ludovico Einaudi and Barbara Morgenstern; Ronald, meanwhile, is part of Tarwater. “Things have their own pace. We didn’t want to put out something for the sake of it. We prefer to wait until there’s a reason to do so, until we have something to say…”.

A typically unhurried Berlin attitude, fully in keeping with t…