Unfortunately Robert Henke is very sick and therefore can’t perform at Save Festival today. Instead, his visual partner Tarik Barri will do an exceptional sound and visual show tonight. Monolake to be re-scheduled asap!
 
Signal, DE — live
Tarik Barri, NL — live
Soundwalk Collective, US — live
Demdike Stare, GB — live
Jichael Mackson, DE — live
Fumiya Tanaka, JP
 
Leisure System @ Bar17:
Jimmy Edgar, US — live
Objekt, GB
Barker, DE
Puzzle, DE
Areaboy, DE
Pixelord, RU
 
Studio:
Terre Thaemlitz a.k.a. DJ Sprinkles, JP — live / DJ
Andrew Pekler, DE — live
Anne-James Chaton, FR — performance
Easy Changes, RU
 
Visuals:
Lichterloh, AT
 
Additional event information via RA.
 

SAVE Festival from SAVE Festival on Vimeo.

The track here is a new, extended edit of the track Cern, released in September 2003, augmented with interview fragments taken from the CERN website, where researchers talk about the LHC on the occasion of the first successful test of the whole machine on September 10, 2008. For Robert Henke, CERN not only stands for a place where thousands of the brightest people of this planet are working together to find out more about the most elemental questions of physics, but it also stands as a place where scientists from all over the world exchange knowledge, regardless of borders, regardless of race, regardless of sex.
 
A bit of a european utopian island in all the madness around us…
 
Monolake Cern-LHC by monolake
 
Visit Monolake’s website for additional information, free downloads, texts and inteviews and loads of pretty intersting material.
 
Monolake Free Download of the Month: Cern-LHC
Released by: imbalance computer music
Release/catalogue number: FTOM
Release date: Oct 1, 2008
* with interview fragments featuring Mike Lamont, Verena Kain, Lucio Rossi, Laurette Ponce, Andrej Siemko and Lyn Evans.
 

A little over two years ago, Robert Henke released ‘Silence’, the seventh Monolake album and the first in what has recently been revealed as a trilogy of full-length works. The sounds of Silence came with a fragment of writing that provided a cinematic element to that album’s lush, delicate atmosphere: “The mountains made me feel light, happy and small … and the gods were with us.” Things have certainly changed in 2012 with ‘Ghosts’, the second chapter of the trilogy. “How I hate those dirty little flies,” reads the text, ostensibly setting the album within a sticky jungle realm. “Impossible to sleep, it is too hot, no wind … and the gods are laughing at us.”
 
Unsurprisingly, ‘Ghosts’ is a demanding journey through the dark side of Henke’s computer wizardry. It begins with the title track—a stormy drum & bass session with an eerie vocal line—but the unnerving vibe really creeps in with the countless little creatures of ‘Toku’, which emerge underneath a hypnotic set of high-frequency whistles.
 
Like Silence, most of ‘Ghosts’ tracks weigh in at less than six minutes—continuing a shift away from the lengthy soundscapes of prior Monolake works—and both albums spend most of their time swung quite heavily at 140 BPM. Compared to ‘Silence’, however, the tools that Henke now employs cut even deeper, as evidenced in the deliciously crisp growls and vocal cascades of ‘Hitting the Surface’ and ‘The Existence of Time’, whose sub-bass grinds away like a maniacal floor buffer.
 
Henke is no stranger to ambient-oriented excursions (check ‘Silence’s’ romantic centerpiece ‘Void’, for example), and Ghosts is at its most haunting when the beat drops away completely, as on ‘Phenomenon’ and ‘Unstable Matter’ The former leads off with a dubwise bass riff that slowly disappears under a chorus of anxious, otherworldly moans. Then there’s ‘Unstable Matter’, whose twisted found-sound elements create what might just be one of Monlake’s most suspense-laden tracks ever.
 
‘Foreign Object’ closes out the album; made mere hours before being sent off for mastering, it’s a thrilling conclusion that should leave listeners on the brink of exhaustion. Escape is the working title for the third and final part of this album trilogy, and it’s sure to be eagerly anticipated, whenever it comes out. Until then, we have another excellent long player to savor from Monolake.
&
Monolake ‘Ghosts’ reviewew on RA by Brian Kolada .

Long-time Bloc collaborators Plex come out of the shadows of their south-east London home to demonstrate to the Bloc massive their fervent, heartfelt commitment to the cerebral edge of rave with the finest lineup they’ve ever fielded for their annual Plex showcase. Their shows in London are the last word in dancefloor devastation and have featured luminaries from Anthony Shake Shakir to Dopplereffekt via Norman Nodge and Morphosis.
 
As Bloc is in their backyard for the first time, they have created a monster curatorial collaboration in the form of the never-before-attempted dual-headed Plex Vs Perc Trax concept.
 
Plex Vs Perc Trax Showcase at Bloc 2012: Monolake / Surgeon / Truss / Perc / Cosmin TRG / Lucy / Objekt
 
Read more here.
 

Release date: 27/02/2012
Format: CD
Genre: Bass Music
Catalogue number: ML026
 
This product will ship from Friday 24 February 2012
Downloads will be made available on the release date
 
Two years after Monolake’s ‘Silence’ release, Robert Henke is back with a new Monolake album entitled ‘Ghosts’. Dark and colorful, with haunting and deep excursions into magic worlds of sound and grooves, held together by a fragmentary story as part of the artwork that indicates a continuation of themes present on ‘Silence’: Precisely crafted earthshaking beats, rough dirty noises, wide lush soundscapes and little sonic creatures inhabiting a fascinating planet in which a lot of things go badly wrong and nothing is taken for granted. Music that augments reality when listening to whilst commuting, music to get lost in when experienced loud in a club. There is nothing minimal in that music, it is bass heavy and full of detail.
Ghosts is released on Robert Henke’s own label Imbalance Computer Music on CD, double vinyl in gatefold packaging and download. The vinyl version includes on bonus CD with all tracks in digital format. CD version comes in luxury digipack.
 
Pre-order your copy of ‘Ghosts’ now via Surus.