Monolake

Emerging from the Berlin-based Basic Channel/Chain Reaction collective founded by Moritz "Maurizio" von Oswald, Monolake ranked among its most respected and longest-running acts, alongside minimalist dub-techno exponents such as Vainqueur, Substance, and Porter Ricks. The project began with Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles as its core, yet Behles stepped away in the early 2000s to focus on Ableton, the music software firm the pair had launched together in 1999. Henke carried the Monolake name alone for a time until 2004, when Torsten Pröfrock—previously credited on Chain Reaction under the guises Various Artists and Resilent—joined as a collaborator. Regardless of lineup, the duo’s music consistently occupied the space where abstract computer compositions met the club-oriented techno revisions pioneered by their early label associates.

Behles pursued formal training at Utrecht’s Institute of Sonology, an electronic music research center established in the late 1960s by Stan Tempelaars and Gottfried Michael Koenig. The two producers first connected at Berlin’s Technical University, where Behles held a teaching post and Henke concentrated on sound engineering for film. Monolake took shape almost incidentally after an initial studio session of collective improvisation yielded several tracks, one of which became their debut single, “Cyan.” Additional 12"s followed in 1995 and 1996; selections from these, augmented by fresh material, surfaced on the 1997 full-length Hongkong, an album widely viewed as Chain Reaction’s strongest and the first to bring Monolake’s previously limited-edition vinyl work to a wider listenership.

Starting with the 1999 single “Fragile,” nearly all subsequent Monolake output appeared on Henke’s own Imbalance Computer Music imprint. Though perhaps less revolutionary than the earliest material, the albums Interstate (1999), Cinemascope (2001), Gravity (2001), Momentum (2003), Polygon Cities (2005), and Silence (2009) maintained a uniformly high standard—lively, intricate, and metallic home-listening techno brimming with detail. Behles maintained a steady stream of work well into the 2010s, issuing full-lengths such as Ghosts (2012) and VLSI (2016) alongside a larger number of 12" releases. Throughout this period Henke balanced his own extensive discography, including several solo-titled projects, with ongoing software development duties at Ableton and mastering work at Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering facility.