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 circuitry tighter. Clicking, ticking, gurgling like a dense jungle of wired wildlife chatter. A breakneck bleep melody taking its time to emerge, before dissolving, returning to the banter of bionic birds, insects and lizards. 

“Tangent I” uses cycling drones and snapping snares to build drama, a sense of anticipation while diving into splashing, aquatic, submerged sonics. There’s a super muted 4 / 4 there, but this is deep, deep dance floor gear. The track’s synths zoom past. Only momentarily oncoming, then glimpsed as if in a rear view mirror. On “Tangent II”, though, that kick is more solid, and the fractured EQing and phasing more “Phylps Track” esque. Its flying fragments, hypnotic, jacking, drawing the album out of the shadows. 

The razor sharp, electro funk of “Perpetuum” follows. Its riffs, deconstructed, rendered debris through icy loops, tipping their hat towards old school Detroit and Chicago. “Amazon” is appropriately bursting with birdsong, initially buoyed only by loose bass notes until the beats begin hitting. Groovy, grungy, and feeding back. The frantic, fidgeting “Ginza” is drum and bass tempo-ed, but not breakbeat-driven. Instead more like house cut at 33 spun at 45. “Terminal” also starts furiously paced, in keeping with its title, peppered with snatches of airport or station travel updates, but slows, calms bringing the set to a close with a chilled finale. The press one-sheet describes the reissue, now 27 years old, as “still sounding wildly futuristic”, and it, techno both timeless and influential, could have, indeed, been made tomorrow.

Monolake’s “Interstate” can be ordered directly from Field Records.