Monolake is a German

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

project founded in 1995, initially consisting of members Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke. Monolake is now being perpetuated by Henke while Behles has focused on running the

music software This is a list of software for creating, performing, learning, analyzing, researching, broadcasting and editing music. This article only includes software, not services. For streaming services such as iHeartRadio, Pandora, Prime Music, and Spoti ...

company

Ableton Ableton AG is a German music software company that produces and distributes the production and performance program Ableton Live and a collection of related instruments and sample libraries, as well as their own hardware controller Ableton Push. ...

, which they founded in 1999 together with Bernd Roggendorf. In 2004, Torsten Pröfrock became a member of the project. Monolake is now perpetuated by Henke alone. Monolake's minimal, dub-influenced

techno Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...

helped establish the sound of the

Chain Reaction A chain reaction is a sequence of reactions where a reactive product or by-product causes additional reactions to take place. In a chain reaction, positive feedback leads to a self-amplifying chain of events. Chain reactions are one way that sys ...

label, also located in Berlin, which subsequently used their own l/i(''Monolake / Imbalance Computer Music'') label for the group's output. Both current members of Monolake have their own solo projects, with Henke releasing under his own name and Pröfrock as "T++" and "Various Artists." In 2008, T++ followed

Ricardo Villalobos Ricardo Villalobos (born 6 August 1970) is a Chilean-born German electronic music producer and DJ. He is well known for his work in the minimal techno and microhouse genres, and is one of the most significant figures in the minimal techno scene. ...

in bridging the gap between

minimal techno Minimal techno is a subgenre of techno music. It is characterized by a stripped-down aesthetic that exploits the use of repetition and understated development. Minimal techno is thought to have been originally developed in the early 1990s by Detro ...

and

dubstep Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the early 2000s. The style emerged as a UK garage offshoot that blended 2-step rhythms and sparse dub production, as well as incorporating elements of broken ...

remix A remix, also sometimes called reorchestration or rework, is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, poem, or photograph ca ...

ing Shackleton's ''Death Is Not Final'' for the Skull Disco label. In 2009, Henke appeared in the electronic music documentary ''

Speaking In Code ''Speaking in Code'' is a character-based documentary directed by Amy Grill about people's obsessions with the techno electronic music lifestyle and the effects on their lives. It follows Modeselektor, the Wighnomy Brothers, Philip Sherburne, ...

'', which presented the completion of the Monodeck. As of 2012, Henke has been designing a new form of live show syncing surround-sound audio stems with visual loops, allowing for improvisation. Monolake is named after

Mono Lake Mono Lake ( ) is a Salt lake, saline soda lake in Mono County, California, formed at least 760,000 years ago as a terminal lake in an endorheic basin. The lack of an outlet causes Hypersaline lake, high levels of salts to accumulate in the lake ...

, which is east of the

Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada ( ) is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primari ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Monodeck

Henke is a

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

engineer who develops custom software and hardware for live performances. As well as working as an engineer for Ableton, Henke designed the Atlantic Waves software for performing live with other producers in different countries simultaneously. In 2003, Henke designed the Monodeck, a

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

-controller interface for spontaneous editing and effects work during live performances, even without having to look at the computer screen. The Monodeck and its successor, Monodeck II, control Ableton Live through special software designed with

Max/MSP Max, also known as Max/MSP/Jitter, is a visual programming language for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling '74. Over its more than thirty-year history, it has been used by composers, pe ...

Discography

* ''Hongkong'' (1997) * ''Gobi. The Desert EP'' (1999) * ''Interstate'' (1999) * ''Cinemascope'' (2001) * ''Gravity'' (2001) * ''Momentum'' (2003) * ''Polygon Cities'' (2005) * ''Plumbicon Versions'' (2006) * ''Silence'' (2009) * ''

Ghosts In folklore, a ghost is the soul or Spirit (supernatural entity), spirit of a dead Human, person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from a ...

'' (2012) * ''VLSI'' (2016) * ''Archaeopteryx'' (2020) * ''Studio'' (2024) Robert Henke solo * ''Piercing Music'' (1994) * ''Floating Point'' (1997) * ''Signal to Noise'' (2004) * ''Layering Buddha'' (2006) * ''Atom/Document'' (2008) * ''Indigo Transform'' (2009) Torsten Pröfrock solo * Various Artists, ''Decay Product'' (1997) * Various Artists, ''8, 8.5, 9 Remixes'' (1999) * Dynamo, ''Außen Vor'' (2002)

References

External links

* * * {{Authority control German electronic music groups Intelligent dance musicians Musical groups from Berlin