I Was There – Monolake’s Robert Henke on the making of the seminal Gravity album
Memories of Berlin at the turn of millennium
Monolake’s third LP Gravity was a gamechanger, joining the musical dots between the strands of techno, electronica and minimal that were becoming increasingly isolationist as the millennium beckoned.
Released in 2001, it was was the second album to be released through the artist’s own Imbalance Computer Music, as well as the first to feature Robert Henke predominately, as his former partner Gerhard Behles became increasingly consumed by the foundations of what become the Abelton Live empire.
However, Gravity was only ever issued on CD – that is, until now. As the new double vinyl pressing of the LP hits the record racks, Henke (pictured above, right, with Behles) remembers its making in the centre of Berlin.
“It was recorded in Berlin, in a studio in a former office building, right in the centre of Berlin. The reason why this was possible was due to the fact that it was used by the GDR (East German) government as a department of education. Then the building was empty and something that these days is not so easy, if not even possible at all, but was back in the day, which is the government had some progressive people in it and they thought ‘hey, this building has 12 floors all with little offices, and they’re all empty. Could this be a temporary space for artists and small businesses? Ultimately, someone just went into the office and said ‘here’s my suggestion, my concept’ and they said, ‘well, we’re not going to do anything with this building for the next two or three years, and they gave us temporary contracts.
“So I ended up in this building, on the ninth floor, overlooking Berlin Alexanderplatz. My neighbours were architects, graphic designers and people like that. I remember that not long after I moved in, people moved into the office next door. They were all wearing suits, I got quite worried, but it turned out they were having a party and that was their fancy dress, ha ha.
“It was solid 1960s architecture, and it was a very open minded place. And at night, either people were here to have a good time or it was empty. It was fantastic to blast music at night there at full volume, overlooking the city. I think that some of the music from the Gravity album could only have been made there. On the opposite side of the street there was a neon advertisement and it was blinking, a Panasonic advertisement, so you’d look out and it was going blue/red, blue/red.
“There wasn’t really a plan – it was just a case of making music and thinking hmmm, well, this track and that track go well together and then potentially adding one or two more tracks together to glue it all together. I have no idea which ones came first.
“I know that it was a difficult time for me, it was just basically the first album I did more or less, 80 or 90% alone, because Gerhard was busy writing business plans for what became Ableton, so he was on his way out as a creative partner. He wanted to be involved but it became very clear to both of us very quickly that it wasn’t really feasible, because his mind was somewhere different. And that made it quite challenging for me on a personal level, because I had to really redefine what we/I was doing. I know that I was very, very insecure about the project at this time. It’s interesting, because if I listen to it now I don’t know why I was so full of doubt. I mean, I do have a tendency to be quite insecure about my work… but after 30 years of doing this, I’ve come to understand something I’m doing is appealing to some people.
“It was the time when minimal techno became very big. So I think at this time Richie Hawtin was very big, Consumed had just come out. It was a time when, I felt, some sort of convergence, between this very produced, very sparse club music. I personally found it a bit narrow and I was a little confused by it because I so much liked the mid-90s from jungle and drum & bass and everything that came beyond and I felt this very straight, four-to-the-floor music was lacking something.
“That was true for a lot of the stuff but not for everything. To me it felt like a time in between. And in retrospect I think I was right because after that you had UK dubstep and suddenly there was a new thing to listen to. Something came out of that time, something that had been waiting to be born. So in a way that period around the year 2000 felt like a period of consolidation, but not so much one of innovation.
“But I have one advantage/disadvantage and that’s that I’m not a DJ. I believe this has an influence on my perception of music, because colleagues of mine who are DJs are much more focussed on doing things that stick to genre definitions – this is a house track, this is a techno track or a minimal track. They immediately think about how to integrate what they do into a DJ set. I never felt like this. I just made what I felt like making.”