Monolake
Surgical digital precision meets deep, subterranean dub. Immersive electronic landscapes that feel like navigating a high-tech city at 3am. For focused, deep listening.
Surgical digital precision meets deep, subterranean dub. Immersive electronic landscapes that feel like navigating a high-tech city at 3am. For focused, deep listening.
Monolake sounds like the inner workings of a supercomputer that has developed an interest in the deep, echoing spaces of a Berlin bunker. It is music of immense clarity and microscopic detail, where every click, hiss, and sub-bass pulse is placed with the precision of a watchmaker. The sound is often cold and architectural, yet it possesses a strange, organic life through the use of field recordings and complex, evolving rhythms.
What truly sets Monolake apart is the mastery of space. This isn't just stereo music; it is an exploration of depth and distance. Robert Henke's background in software engineering (as a co-creator of Ableton Live) is evident in the way the tracks breathe and modulate. It’s a sound that bridges the gap between the dancefloor-focused minimalism of the Chain Reaction era and the high-concept sound art of the modern avant-garde.
Start with 'Interstate' for the quintessential 90s dub-techno experience, then move to 'Cinemascope' to hear the project evolve into something more cinematic and abstract. If you want to hear the peak of their digital sound design, 'Ghosts' offers a haunting, high-definition journey into the project's later, more complex textures.
Monolake is a German electronic music project founded in 1995, initially consisting of members Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke. Monolake is now being perpetuated by Henke while Behles has focused on running the music software company Ableton, which they founded in 1999 together with Bernd Roggendorf. In 2004, Torsten Pröfrock became a member of the project. Monolake is now perpetuated by Henke alone. Monolake's minimal, dub-influenced techno helped establish the sound of the Chain Reaction label, also located in Berlin, which subsequently used their own [ml/i] (Monolake / Imbalance Computer Music) label for the group's output. Both current members of Monolake have their own solo projects, with Henke releasing under his own name and Pröfrock as "T++" and "Various Artists." In 2008, T++ followed Ricardo Villalobos in bridging the gap between minimal techno and dubstep by remixing Shackleton's Death Is Not Final for the Skull Disco label. In 2009, Henke appeared in the electronic music documentary Speaking In Code, which presented the completion of the Monodeck. As of 2012, Henke has been designing a new form of live show syncing surround-sound audio stems with visual loops, allowing for improvisation. Monolake is named after Mono Lake, which is east of the Sierra Nevada in California.
Shares idm, ambient techno, glitch (subgenres); absent (vocal style)
Shares minimal techno, idm, ambient techno (subgenres); mysterious, brooding, tense (moods)
Shares minimal techno, ambient techno, idm (subgenres); mysterious, brooding, contemplative (moods)
Shares digital clarity, minimalist, field recordings (production style); minimal techno, idm, ambient techno (subgenres)
Shares minimal techno, idm, dub (subgenres); digital clarity, minimalist, field recordings (production style)
Shares minimal techno, idm, ambient techno (subgenres); digital clarity, minimalist, field recordings (production style)
Shares contemplative, mysterious, brooding (moods); minimal techno, ambient techno, glitch (subgenres)
Shares glitch, minimal techno, ambient techno (subgenres); absent (vocal style)
Shares contemplative, mysterious, brooding (moods); absent (vocal style)
Shares minimal techno, idm, crystalline, ambient techno (signature)
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