Monolake – “Ghosts” – [Imbalance]

Berlin dub-techno for the diseased and deranged. Meticulous sonic experimentalists started as a duo in 1999, but Gerhard Behles has since left to run Ableton, which both he and now-sole-Monolaker Robert Henke helped found. This is pretty dark, as well as painfully minimal (in the best way), and has an antiseptic, slightly schizoid quality. I guess I could dance to it but a lot of people wouldn’t want to. As far as I can understand, some of the sounds were created by recording frequencies above the range of human hearing, then pitch-shifting them down to audible levels. Very little physical equipment was involved in the production of ‘Ghosts’: according to Henke, he barely touches ‘real’ instruments these days, preferring to compose entirely on a computer (in Ableton, surprise surprise). The amount of theory and hard science that apparently goes into his creative process makes for Intelligent Dance Music in the truest sense. If this grooved just a little bit less it might be industrial, but it also has more nuance than is usually associated with that genre, so maybe industrial in the Carter/Tutti sense. Ambient and (true) dubstep vibes give it a spectral and oblique Burial feel. It’s also precise and repetitive like a lot of other music of this kind probably being made in Germany. Moments that seem like found-sound (but are probably synthesized) are particularly creepy, e.g. the creaking of your dead grandmother’s rocking-chair on t.10 or when t.2 wrings unbearable tension from a sound like a bouncing ping-pong ball. You can hear a pin drop in here. Why are you looking at me like that, Robert? t.7 and 8 are more ambient than beat-driven. T.1 features a whispy E.V.P.-like chant of “You do not exist.” It’s one of the only times one hears a voice on this album, which seems fitting: emptiness and open space are essential components of its sound. Pretty brilliant.