About

Continuing its faithful documentation of the early years of Monolake, Field Records proudly presents the first-ever vinyl pressing of seminal 1999 album Interstate. In a kaleidoscopic lattice of micro-rhythms and exquisitely dynamic textural work, Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles fully collaborated for the final time on this record — and created an electronica landmark in the process.

Monolake's evolution from their earlier dub-techno-tinted works saw their exploration of Max/MSP go further out. The duo yielded greater complexity in the behaviour of their sound palette to achieve an organismic quality that remains an enduring influence on so many strands of experimental electronic music today. Interstate is a vivid record that builds up eight different ecosystems of sound and subtly threads elegant grooves through their root structures.

There's a house-like undulation to the low-end driving Tangent I and Tangent II, but the infinitesimally detailed layers of sound on top swoon from techno synth shimmers to trickling waters, snaking delay trails and pin prick percussion. You can hear the unmistakable, snappy rhythmic thrust of drum & bass driving Ginza, but here it's used as an engine for the crispest array of designer percussion and dub-soaked synth chirrups. Across every track, Henke and Behles demonstrate a potent combination, both groovily instinctive and eternally fascinating to try and pick apart.

After Interstate, Behles departed to focus entirely on the development of Ableton Live and Henke steered Monolake towards a leaner — but no less pioneering — sound. Every Monolake record has its own unique context and sound, and the circumstances of Interstate could never be repeated. Capturing the leaps in progress that were being made in digital music production at the end of the millennium, it's an information-rich document of a moment in time that still sounds wildly futuristic 27 years later. — (via Label)

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A constant panting, a never-ending whirr: in 1999, Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles collaborated for the last time on a joint album as Monolake. Even 27 years later, Interstate still sounds futuristic, like a machine that has given up precision in favour of atmosphere.

The opener "Abundance" takes its bearings from dub-techno registers, which it infuses with the erratic mechanics of a broken clockwork. Here, time runs off course; massive chords produce rear-end collisions all the way to a pile-up. Monolake is profoundly artificial music that nevertheless has feelings. "Gecko" plays out against an organic backdrop and, especially through its unsteady rhythm, feels more frayed than the controlled, sometimes cool brittleness of the opener. In "Tangent I", delicate rivulets run down cave walls, while computer music discovers, prophetically, that in all its facets it has the makings of a biotope. That it is a living organism and far more than software, than stems in Ableton – the company Henke and Behles co-founded in the same year in which they produced Interstate. In "Tangent II", too, there is a trickling, only the track feels more stringent. As though Pole’s dub had been fitted with a moderate four-to-the-floor beat. Interstate feels throughout as though the duo had consciously set themselves limits. As though both had known, even before the turn of the millennium, what sonic excess would come crashing down on electronic music in the decades to follow. Who else should have sensed it? — (via HHV Mag)

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— 2LP Pressed on 180g black vinyl
— Housed in a single-pocket sleeve

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Label: Field Records
Format: 2 x Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo
Reissued: 2026 / Originally Released: 1999
Genre: Electronic
Style: Minimal Techno, Ambient

File under: House /  Techno / Electro
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