Henke Goes Back in Time

Robert Henke’s new album, Signal to Noise – Volume II, is all about time, or more to the point, can be experienced as an expression of, a reflection on, time. To begin with the tracks are all drones, lengthy extensions of tone for its own sake. They aren’t just held notes. No, as drones, they are dense, ever-shifting totalities in constant sonic flow. The longest of these is nearly 13 minutes, and the shortest is more than half that. There is well over an hour of music on this album of just seven tracks. In addition, this second set of Signal to Noise reaches back in time, doubly: first to 2004, when Henke’s first Signal to Noise album was released, and second to 1989, when the instrument on which this music was made, the Yamaha SY77 FM, was introduced to the market. This is meditative music that is, itself, a meditation on these various interwoven concepts: immersive listening, harmony and texture as artistic ends unto themselves, the long influence of ancient machines, and the…