On September 6th the musician, audiovisual artist and co-creator of Ableton Live Robert Henke, AKA Monolake, releases a new album, titled simply ‘Studio’.
A celebration of human-machine interaction, the creative process and the album format, Henke delivers a virtuoso, all-killer-no-filler masterclass in the true potential of an electronic long-player.
Punchy, purposeful and engaging, no moment is wasted, and every sound is perfectly placed. Across this multifaceted ride Henke reshapes deep abstract dance, sci fi techno, Kraftwerkian melody, sleek IDM and psych kosmische into a distinct, continuous composition.
In Robert’s own words:
“My studio is my shelter, I feel comfortable there, surrounded by those wonderful inspiring machines. A small cosy room where ideas emerge, mature, morph, and find their final shape. ‘Studio’ is the result of spending time in that space. The album’s intention is simple: Presenting a beautiful personal musical journey. The creative process in itself matters to me, the interaction with my instruments, the accidental discoveries, the successful execution of a vision and anything in between.
The result counts even more. I care deeply about the outcome of my work, I want it to be intentional, meaningful, consistent, and personal.
Most of the tracks on this album got revised countless times, and then even more, once I knew in which context and order I wanted to arrange them. I have been living with my music for months now, listening, thinking, changing, and diving deeper and deeper into each piece.
I love albums, a beautiful format where each part has its place, one long journey from start to end, yet each piece has its own story, its own flavour and history.
Some of the material I created years ago for installations, some is derived from previous audiovisual works, all completely ripped apart and rearranged multiple times, and other parts came into existence just a few months ago. During their creation my pieces often turn into something completely different, they repeatedly morph from one state to another until they become solid.
What I consider a core element at the beginning might later be discarded completely, and a little detail in the background might become the essence. Many explorations ended in the trash bin before the results had the chance to become a part of ‘Studio’. Things did not fall into place, did not feel right.
Other compositions had to fill the void instead, some created quickly in a rush of inspiration, some slowly, shy, questioning their significance. This album did not come into existence in a hurry; it took as long as it needed.
I used the time to walk around my creations, to listen to them from a distance, physically, mentally, with friends, in all kinds of different contexts. I tried to understand my own work. I started to see patterns, hidden motifs, things that were buried in between too many layers of sound. What is essential? What is ornament? I reduced, rearranged, added again.
The closer I got to the final state of ‘Studio’ the more clarity I found. The inherent doubts and the nagging voices from the inside got more quiet, and a sense of achievement started to manifest itself. More and more details just fell into place. And now it is done. After making electronic music for almost thirty years I don’t care anymore about genres, about how to label things. It is music, my own personal music, and that’s it. Call it ‘electronica’ if you wish.
Process Notes:
The music on this album has been constructed in Ableton Live. Most of the sounds have been captured from my collection of beloved hardware synthesisers and effects, often further processed until something completely different emerged. Sometimes I spend days in the studio just recording sounds or creating new presets, without already having a composition in mind.
A few selected musical instruments contributed significantly to the palette of this album; a New England Digital Synclavier II, which also served as inspiration for the artwork, a Sequential Prophet VS, which is present on all Monolake albums since 1996, a Yamaha SY77, the Linn Drum, and the Oberheim Xpander. And then there is Operator in Ableton Live, which I developed in 2004 and still love to use, and a lot of the other effects and instruments in the software. And of course my Granulator III instrument, and the PitchLoop89 audio effect. The final sonic world is often the result of radical processing of these elements, via filtering, pitch shifting, time stretching and other types of processing, both in Live and with my hardware. The good old Alesis Quadraverb deserves a honorary mention here, so does the AMS RMX 16.
When composing, I often start with a drum groove, a simple pattern triggering samples I collected earlier, or percussive synthetic sounds. Afterwards I arrange other elements around it. This is often more a process of finding than searching. I have an idea what I might want to add, but when clicking through my presets or adjusting parameters, I discover something else. I record layers of layers of new elements. This is the fun part. And from there the search for meaning and form starts: What happens when, where, why, how long, how often, with how much variation? During this very fragile process things often change a lot. This is where I oscillate between euphoria and crisis mode. The biggest challenge: throwing things away that did cost a lot of time to make but ultimately are just bad.
In the final stage of creating this album, I worked on all tracks at the same time, listening to them in the context of the others. A lot of things changed again as a result. Suddenly previously completely fine endings and beginnings made no sense anymore and needed to be reworked. I always aim to create an album which is one long journey, and where the successions of pieces feel more like movements of a symphony. I removed elements, add new ones, and often only at this very late stage I started to understand which parts in each piece are central.
At a very late state I again added a lot of little details to each track: The digital creatures in ‘Cute Little Aliens’ became more varied and agitated, and I had a lot of fun embedding the scenery in a wet pre-human environment, with thunder, the ocean, granulated raindrops, and other forces of nature. ‘Eclipse’ got its dark cymbals at the beginning and turned more into a wild drumming exercise and a track called ‘Spectral Run’ got revised again and again for weeks, until I finally gave up on it and replaced it by something that I wrote within a few days and in great desperation: ‘Signals’. But at the same time I gained enough distance to be able to reduce and simplify where needed: I cleaned up rhythmical patterns, let things develop over longer time periods again, or got rid of things that turned out to hide other things below that are far more worth noticing. Today is May 13 2024, a beautiful sunny day in Berlin, and I decide that the album is finished.”
Monolake ‘Studio’
September 6th
Vinyl/download /stream
Tracklist:
01 The Elders Disagree
02 Thru Stalactites
03 Signals
04 Cute Little Aliens
05 Intermezzo
06 Global Transport
07 Stasis Field
08 Prime Lundy
09 Red Alphonso
10 Eclipse
Stay tuned to the Techno Trip Tracks of the Week selection and Listen to Monolake’s new music first
