MONOLAKE - Cinemascope

Second album this year for Monolake, Cinemascope doesn’t depart much from the traditional soundscapes explored by Robert Henke and Gerhard Bekles. The pair met at Berlin Technical University, where Bekles was a lecturer, and Henke was studying sound engineering in films. The Monolake project started when a series of studio work led to the release of their first EP, Cyan, on the seminal Chain Reaction label. As part of the wave of computer music creators to have emerged with Chain Reaction and Basic Channel, Henke had already started to make his mark with his own releases, but it is with his work as part of Monolake that he is better known.
Cinemascope dives deep into minimalist electronic ambiences from its very beginning, pursuing the exploration of sound structures and polyrhythmic architectures introduced in previous albums. Centred around lengthy analogue waves supported by frail rhythmic backbones, the ten tracks forming the core of Cinemascope play with the same concept of sound liquefaction as its predecessors, pushing further the possibilities of sound processing epitomised by the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction releases. Neglecting the glitch and twitch favoured by most of their contemporaries, the duo create beautiful epic sequences based on magnificent sonic constructions, achieving melodic expression without using melodies as such. Kicking off with a short ambient urban sound, followed by Bicom, a slow paced nine minute long evolving masterpiece of intimate electronic built around a very basic beat pattern and computerised voices, Cinemascope moves to more open territories as it progresses through atmospheric formations. Cubicle and Remoteable demonstrates dance floor potential, in a futuristic sort of way, while Ping or Alpenrausch seem based on extremely abstract drum’n’bass structures, on which the duo drop thick foggy moods, and Cut flirts with some of Autechre’s most accessible moments. The album comes to a close with Indigo, suspended in time and space, with only an earthy beating bass drum and a few environmental noises to remind of its human connections.
With Cinemascope, Monolake carefully establish the balance between aesthetic and functionality, as they investigate the frontiers of minimalism. Monolake manage however to avoid falling into the pit of extreme experimentalism to the detriment of accessibility, and build on an ever-changing patchwork of emotions, making Cinemascope a very interesting work indeed.