MONOLAKE Vinyl & CDs

Review: Monolake's latest record is does a damn good job of convincing us of his obsessive tendencies. We wouldn't know it - not least since us end-listeners are so used to reaping the fetishistic products of artistic sweats - but Monolake himself has since let on that "most of the tracks on this album got revised countless times, and then even more". It's these revisions, iterations through time, to which we sadly must accept that we will never gain access. Even so, we can appreciate that the likes of 'Intermezzo', 'Global Transport' and 'Cute Little Aliens' are essentially the sum total of a nearly endless versioning practice, one that Monolake rightly, impertinently stands by, not to give ground to any outside injunction to streamline or 'agile' his craft. The album eventually became a formal meditation on the studio itself - "my shelter, I feel comfortable there, surrounded by wonderful inspiring machines. A small cosy room where ideas emerge, mature, morph, and solidify into their final shape". Monolake goes on to admit his analytic, perfectionistic tendencies with statements like "all completely ripped apart and rearranged multiple times" and "repeatedly shift from one state to another until they become solid". And while the music remains thoroughly danceable, it's the tracks' toplines, their accoutrements, that are the most "fleshed-out" - they could rival a haruspex's auspice in their ability to find meaning in endless, visceral variety.

Review: Back in 1997 Monolake was still a project in its earliest development, as Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles were experimenting with the possibilities of computer music while most people were still very much in the analogue era. There had however been some major drops on the seminal Chain Reaction label, and then they released Hongkong as a compilation of these early singles. It made sense, given the way the early Monolake sound trod the line between dancefloor techno and home-listening head trips, and so they presented the likes of 'Cyan' and 'Lantau' on CD, embellished with a little field recording magic from a trip to a computer music conference in Hong Kong, hence the title. Now Field Records have reissued this seminal compilation and given it a first vinyl pressing, remastering the music in the process and ensuring it sounds the best it possibly could.