I'm not one to pass on press releases (especially
verbatim), but I
just had to share the good news I just got:
Monolake
"polygon_cities"
Label: Monolake / Imbalance Computer
Music
Release date: end of June
File Under:
Electronica/Techno/Ambient-dub/morhping,
pulsating soundscapes
After 2 years waiting we can proudly
announce Berlin-based computer generated
music artist MONOLAKE (aka ROBERT HENKE)
with his 2005 masterpiece album
"polygon_cities".
It is a journey into morhping, pulsating
soundscapes and into permutative
repetition,
the elements which define the signature
style of Monolake.
Well, nothing else needs to be said,
momentum of sonic brilliance!
MONOLAKE 1995 - 2005 "Ten years of
music"
polygon_cities will be presented at the
MUTEK festival in Montreal in June, more
North American tour dates are planned
for September
OVERVIEW:
polygon_cities is techno music beyond
the standard grooves and sounds usually
found in this genre. polygon_cities not
only works on the dancefloor but also
offers an abundance of composed and
carefully placed details, which will
reveal successively when listen to the
tracks more often. polygon_cities is
music for several degrees of attention.
It is a journey into morhping, pulsating
soundscapes and into permutative
repetition, the elements which define
the signature style of Monolake.
Fascination for technology, a sense of
coldness and danger, a romantic escape,
but also warmth, and euphoria, these are
emotions we superimposed on the tracks,
using and abusing the power of music.
The CD closes with a clear homage to the
dancefloor, "Plumbicon" and leaves the
listener in a good mood, ready to enjoy
and explore the world, even if it is
covered with observation cameras
["CCTV“], or strange machinery
["Invisible"].
MONOLAKE 1995 - 2005: Ten years of
music:
MONOLAKE is an open project dedicated to
computer generated music, founded in
1995 by ROBERT HENKE AND GERHARD BEHLES.
They were impressed and influenced by
minimal techno music and drum&bass and
at the same discovered the sonic
richness and sophistication of accademic
computer music. These poles became the
source and inspiration for their own
creations.
The first releases on the highly
acclaimed Berlin techno label Chain
Reaction, an offspring of Basic Channel,
brought MONOLAKE some public attention.
Due to their involvement with the
Elektronische Studio der Technischen
Universitat Berlin they also had the
chance to do comissioned works for
occations like "50 years of music
concrete" and numerous other projects.
The first Album from 1997, titled
Hongkong, combined processed
environmental sounds captured during the
International Computer Music Conferernce
1996 in Hong Kong with synthesized
timbres. It became the blueprint for a
specific MONOLAKE style which is often
permutating complex rhythmical
structures interacting with rich
textural elements, providing depth and
color. The second album, Interstate,
released 1999 became the first release
on ROBERT HENKES own label, [ml/i] .
While the music on Hongkong was still
very much influenced by minimal techno
and dub, Interstate was significantly
more complex and more orientated towards
micro-editing of sonic particles. This
detailed manipulation of sound was
possible due to self written software,
realised in Max/MSP, which allowed them
to create textures and rhythmical
gestures impossible to achive elsewise.
Gobi. The desert, a 34 mintue epic track
from 1999 was completly done in their
own software, mostly Max/MSP but also
with the beta version of Native
Instruments "Reaktor", since GERHARD
BEHLES wrote the sampling and
re-synthesis part of it. A bit later he
started his own software company,
Ableton.
The third album, Gravity, released 2000,
brought the focus back towards dance
music and the dark, noisy and
atmospheric pieces exposed there made
MONOLAKE an often requested live
performer in clubs. Cinemascope, 2002,
stood in retrospect for a time of
unsecurity, both personel and in a
general musical context. It contains a
variety of different pieces, but lacks
the coherence of the earlier works.
After 2000, everyone involved in
electronic club music seemed to search
for new ways of expression. Techno was
nearly dead and technology had nothing
new to offer as a compensation for the
lack of inspiration. Cinemascope also
stood for a period of significant
changes in production.
A typical MONOLAKE track created by
GERHARD BEHLES and ROBERT HENKE was the
result of setting up a system of
software and hardware which allowed to
use the studio as a real time instrument
and "perform" with it. The results were
endless recording sessions, later edited
into pieces. This kind of workflow did
not fit anymore when working alone. The
production process and environment had
to be re-thought. While producing
Cinmeascope the studio changed every
day, and every setup seemed to be
inappropriate. At the end ROBERT HENKE
took everything apart, and started to
work at home with a laptop. The studio
of the future: no studio?!
Momentum came out in 2003 and has been
done in ROBERT’s appartment, mostly
within the software Ableton Live, to
which he added more and more features
with in every version. It became the hub
and center of his studio. Momentum was
the first MONOLAKE album ROBERT
completly realised alone. The
counterpoint to Momentum was Signal to
Noise [2004], an ambitious, serious work
of sound art which irritated some
journalists due to its radical absence
of what they considered to be real
music, released under ROBERT´s own name
to distinguish it from the MONOLAKE
works.
At the same time, MONOLAKE became again
a more collaborative project, since T++,
who also worked with ROBERT on some
parts of Cinemascope joined the team.
They started working on music which
feels to them like the most exiting
re-invention of the wheel since the
beginning of the MONOLAKE project. While
providing the expected timeless flow of
rhythm and sound, the underlying
rhythmical structure and the sound
design itself is very different.
MONOLAKE is ROBERT HENKE, producer,
mastering engineer and music software
developer plus friends. HENKE also
released a bunch of more academic
computer music works and is part of the
development team of the software Ableton
Live. MONOLAKE is quite often on tour.
--
Andrew Duke
scoring/sound design/source
http://andrew-duke.com
Cognition Audioworks label
[Andrew Duke, Foal, Clinker, Granny'Ark]
http://cognitionaudioworks.com
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