Monolake / Interstate / Field Records

Monolake were Berlin-based duo Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke. Between 1996 and 1997 they released 3 singles and 1 album on Basic Channel’s Chain Reaction imprint. Then in `99 pair produced one final long-player together, before Behles moved on to concentrate on developing music software for Ableton, the company that they both founded. Leaving Henke to continue as Monolake alone. Titled “Interstate”, as its pedigree suggests, the album is a dub techno-derived adventure. An exploration of the process / genre that opens with “Abundance”, where the sound of speeding traffic transforms into a racing rhythm, with ping ponging particles for beats, and textures that pulse and breathe. Urgent, urban and atmospheric, its sources are stripped to infinitely echoed shards, static, crackle, cracks of electrical thunder and lightning. Warm swells tempering metallic rattling. Abstract treatments swirling, as washes and rushes, around the subliminal suggestion of a groove. “Gecko” twists the…