Ableton co-creator Robert Henke aka Monolake talks to us about his latest album, musical exploration, and his relationship with studio.
Few people in this world have had such a ubiquitous impact on the studio as Monolake. His creativity has helped thousands of musicians’ voices be heard around the globe through his work with Ableton. With this in mind, it seems fitting that he has created this album.
Fun, exploratory and imaginative, ‘Studio’ is a sincere ode to Henke’s happy place. Across its ten tracks, Monolake draws from his 20+ years of experience as he recycles old material from his many audio-visual projects, weaving everything together with dormant field recordings and unique sound design from his carefully curated synth collection.
‘Studio’ is Monolake in his purest and unadulterated form. It is a project that was made with a love of the process, free from the constraints of outside pressure and the results can be heard in its quirky, subterranean soundscapes, and striking sonic narratives that would be fitting in any dystopian sci-fi side-scrolling shoot-em-up.
Can you give us a synopsis of the album, sort of in your own words?
It’s kind of a mix between trying to go back to my roots and expanding towards something new. It’s also the result of not being forced to do anything and the result of not caring anymore about what people might think or what expectations they have. It all felt very liberating, and I believe the result shows that this is a good thing.
I didn’t feel the need to adhere to a certain style for instance, so if you ask me how I would classify the music, I don’t have a good answer. It’s not techno, it’s not electro, it’s not drum and bass, it’s not drone, it’s not IDM, it’s not EDM. It’s not dub. It’s a mix of all the influences I’ve had in the last 30 years as a musician and ultimately, I feel it’s just pretty much myself.
Were you listening to music as you were making the album, or are you the type to block all outside influences out of the creative process?
I have phases where I’m really diving into music of all sorts, and then I have phases where I deliberately keep myself from influences because they confuse me. These days, I try to avoid listening to music in the background. I would rather listen intently when I feel like I have the headspace for it – then I really like to dig into it.
I love to close my eyes and enjoy the music. It brings me back to when I would listen to music as a teenager. When music was precious. I grew up in a time way before the internet and streaming. I remember the feeling of buying a record, taking it home and putting it on the turntable, and the anxiety of not knowing if you have just spent a lot of money on a bad record.
You would just give it another try, and then another until you’re either giving up and being disappointed, or you love it, and it becomes a part of your life for several years. That amount of significance is something that I really enjoy in retrospect. If I listen to music that is dear to me, I always try to come back to that. Maybe there, lies some influence in my way of thinking. I want to create music that is so rich in detail that people can listen to it 10, 20, 50 times.
Nowadays, people aren’t just limited to their collections and they have a broader range of music they can access. Do you think that experience is more difficult to replicate because of this?
That’s a difficult question. I assume the answer is probably yes, so it’s harder to get into this mental state. But on the other side, you have more exposure to a lot of different stuff. I don’t want to be this kind of pessimistic old person here saying, everything was better in the old days. It was just different.
Now, however, there is so much music to discover, and it’s so easy to get new influences. This is something that I find very rewarding. I think It also creates a different musical culture. I find it fantastic that someone can simply send me a link and I suddenly discover a new musical world, or just a nice song or an artist I had no clue about.
But what I find strange – and maybe this tells a little bit about the underlying desires of us human beings – is that I often come across videos on my social media with people freaking out when a DJ is playing 40-year-old music like LFO, Moby – Go, or an old Goldie track for instance.
From my old man’s perspective, this is a bit strange because when I was 20 and discovering new music, I could not imagine that at a party someone would play 40-year-old music and people were freaking out. We were freaking out by the latest metalheads that just dropped last week. For my generation, the idea was about getting rid of all the old references and doing something different.
Shawn Reynaldo has mentioned this phenomenon in his work. How the foundations of electronic music were built on futurism whilst the current generation seems to be looking for that ‘classic’ sound.
As I said, I don’t share the pessimistic view that no good music is coming out anymore. There’s so much amazing stuff, both from big names and from totally unknown artists. I just think the methods of music discovery are different.
Back in the days of pop, the big labels were the ones who decided what was interesting. In the early times of electronic club music, it was a handful of DJs who somehow perpetuated a style by playing the music. Nowadays we have a much broader distribution channel.
Now it has become the individual’s responsibility to decide what they like. So instead of saying, I go to this party, or I listen to that label to get what I want, I now have to do my own homework if I want to experience interesting music which can be overwhelming. Or at least it is to me. This is why networks of friends are so important.
I discover so much cool stuff these days. The latest one, for instance, is the new FKA Twigs single. It’s fantastic! It has awesome production and it’s rich and cool! It’s everything I can want from music. Plus, the video is amazing. If you look at the liner notes, the number of people who were involved in both the video and the music shows how much teamwork was involved. It is a great achievement for a group of people who are pushing the limits within their genres, and I applaud that.
It’s a very interesting time for music. There are certain DJs now like Eris Drew for example, who are playing with the juxtaposition of older and newer stuff. You get to see which ones have stood the test of time and which ones are holding up.
What’s also interesting to me, is that different places, and DJs, had different styles of music. Manchester had its style, as did London, and Berlin. There was no on-demand music, so unless you went there, you didn’t have access to the popular sounds from that area.
I mean, the fact that there were regional styles is an interesting phenomenon of the past. As someone living in Berlin, which became an international hub for both music and art I think about this a lot. We are becoming a place that is losing its individuality.
If Berlin looks the same and if the clubs look the same as in Paris, London, and Dubai, then what’s the point in coming to Berlin? So, in this regard, I might be a bit old school in that I like the idea of going to a specific place because you want to experience a specific flavour.
It comes back to the question of globalisation and how much is too much.
Exactly, but it’s not a one-sided thing because then you can also argue that this allows people who for what reason cannot travel to experience that. It’s a luxury to be able to go to a jungle party in London, you know. The fact that this is not necessary anymore is also a good situation.
On the talk of like inspirations, for the track ‘Cute Little Aliens’ you said that you thought a lot about scenery. As a respected visual artist, are there any external visual inputs in your studio that you draw from?
No, it’s actually the opposite. Since the beginning, electronic music for me was a window to a fantasy world. When I was listening to stuff like Jean-Michel Jarre in my room as a child, or the early Plastikman and Basic Channel stuff, I was teleported to a new world. A different world, one full of images and stories that would appear in my head. When I’m making music, I often get these associations.
For that record, I had made this one sound that had this kind of organic quality and I immediately thought of some little alien. Once I had this idea, I used it to create the track. It’s a resonance. The idea’s come from what I’m hearing.
When I start to do things, an image will suddenly appear in my mind that informs the rest of the piece. In this case, it quickly became very clear that I needed more aliens, so I started to explore my instruments to see how many different alien sounds I could create.
I knew these aliens needed an environment to live in, so I started to think about dripping water. From there, I began searching through my sound library experimenting with different water sounds until I found the right balance.
For the track ‘Global Transport’ I didn’t really have a plan, but I felt that adding some field recordings could be nice. I eventually stumbled upon some train announcements and it was an immediate match.
The announcements themselves are computer generated, so they already have this kind of very broken mechanical rhythm, so I decided to make them even more mechanical. It was great fun aligning every single syllable of the announcement to the beat to the point where this female computer voice was kind of rapping along to my music.
I found it interesting that the album contains collections of older material from previous projects as some artists tend to put old work behind them. Tell me how it felt revisiting some of this older material. What was your thought process when trying to place it into a new context?
If you had asked me maybe 15-20 years ago, I would have said I never reuse stuff, but nowadays I feel that there is a very positive aspect in reusing old material, because whenever I reuse it, I find a new context. In a way, it feels like I keep these things alive for myself. If there is a sound that I crafted once that I really like, why not reuse it?
If I do, it then serves two purposes. The one purpose is that you immediately feel at home, because I know this sound from somewhere, and the other thing is how I could use it in a different context.
I have a nice connection to my old sounds, so in a way, I feel comfortable reusing them. Another thing is that I’m no longer afraid that it’s getting boring because I have recontextualized them. Especially when I take stuff from my audio-visual works that have never been released on a record. It’s actually even more important to use these sounds because if not, they would be just lost in time.
The 808 is a prime example of this. No one would question the fact that the 808 has been excessively used by Talking Heads and five billion other artists before. But, at the same time, when playing an 808, you are playing a sound that is known and has been used. So if that is fine, then I think it’s completely fine if I reuse my own sounds.
How would you describe your relationship with the studio? What is that space to you?
It’s a love-hate relationship. I have a very deep relationship with my instruments, so the collection here is not arbitrary. It’s the result of much thinking, trying, and decision-making on which instruments I really want to have around me.
When I’m in this relatively small room here, then I feel, as I wrote in my liner notes – protected. I close the door and I’m in my own world. Then, within this world, I lose the idea of everything outside. There’s no internet here normally. No mobile phone. It’s just me, my instruments, and my DAW.
It’s a space where I create a dialogue with these machines and see what they offer, and what I feel like doing.
Would you describe it as more of a sanctuary or a laboratory?
I would say, both. My access to these machines is on one side very logical and very technical because I know how they work, sometimes in great detail. But at the same time when I’m working, I’m not looking into scientific clarity – I look towards inspiration.
Would you say that you were the type to impose rules on yourself when you step into the studio?
There are no rules, but what I can say is that it’s very important to me that this space is clean and the same every time I enter it. What would not work for me for instance, is just to grab my laptop and sit in a cafe making music. I would be too distracted.
I think my biggest challenge is that I feel a bit torn between two parts of my personality. One part really wants to be focused and structured, and the other part is a collector. The collector of course wants new synthesizers and effects to play around with, but really I know that none of these machines solve any of my artistic problems.
In fact, a lot of music from the past that I truly admire has been done with 10 % of what is in this room. I’m trying to avoid becoming one of those old collectors who doesn’t produce any significant output whilst having the most amazing studios in their basement.
It’s like the fight between the left and the right parts of the brain, isn’t it? The logical brain and the passionate one.
Very much.
Do you plan to make more music, or are you at a point now where you’re just sort of doing things as you feel?
If I had time now, I would continue making music as Monolake and create another album. But in a different life, I’m also heavily involved with Ableton which takes up a lot of my time. I also have plans for creating a new audio-visual performance piece, but I don’t know when this will be finished. It’s gonna be a bigger project and I don’t want to be rushed.
The beauty of my situation is that I’m quite independent. My costs of living are relatively moderate, and the work I am doing pays the bills. I’m not forced to DJ every night to pay my rent, and I’m not forced to release music because the label says so. This gives me the freedom to do things when it feels right.
Sometimes you need time to develop things.
Yes, but it’s also a mixed bag because deadlines are also good. Without deadlines, I wouldn’t do anything. I’m a person who likes to refine things, and I can always find something to change. Knowing that I need to finish by a specific time is a good thing for me.
Take this album for instance. If I listen to it now, there are already so many details I would change. And it’s good that I can’t change them anymore.
Do you have any advice for people struggling with this?
Well, I came up with an interesting thought whilst making the album. It’s totally banal, but it’s important to keep in mind. As an artist, it’s wise to rid yourself of the idea that you are delivering something as the ultimate piece of art. Whatever you do is a momentary state. Every Monolake album, every interview, every talk, etc. is just a result of what I am at this moment, and the next one is a different result that is informed by everything before it.
Some things get better over time, some things get lost. It’s a process. All you can do is try to make it as good as possible at that time. It’s okay if it’s not perfect.