Tag: monolake

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Robert Henke – Indigo Transform

Indigo Transform

Once again Monolake genius Robert Henke delivers a masterpiece of tranquility: a 60 minute reworking of “Indigo”, the closing track of Monolake’s Cinemascope album (2001).

The original track is 8 1/2 minutes of layered sound and relaxing dripping water.
Swedish “installation artist” Fredrik Wretman contacted Robert Henke to use this track for a new installation called “Tap Tim“: ‘one single calm and focused work of art in a huge gallery space’.

But as expected this simple approach was not the route Henke would prefer to take. The original track simply was too short to just put on repeat.

ambient music, RECOMMENDATIONS

Robert Henke – Layering Buddha

Robert Henke - Layering Buddha

It seems there’s an ongoing outbreak of Buddha Machine–inspired releases…

Only a few days ago I reported about the ‘Buddha Jukebox’, containing all sorts of remixes based on the original Buddha Machine samples. One day later I stumble across this Robert ‘Monolake’ Henke release. (One track of his CD is also featured on the Jukebox Buddha: check the sample track below).

Compared to the Jukebox Buddha, there’s quite a different feel. Whereas the Jukebox Buddha explores all possible surfaces of the Buddha Machine, Henke dives deep into the soul of it. He has magnified the sounds, enhanced the unheard artifacts and created a layered soundspace that has ZEN written all over it.

It’s astonishingly beautiful (and not unlike his last year’s ‘Signal to Noise’ release).

Conceptually it’s lightyears away from the original FM3 Buddha machine, which was deliberately lo-fi and poor sounding.
But that really doesn’t matter at all. The Buddha Machine now has its own spin off of peaceful sounding drone recordings – would FM3 ever have imagined that their lo-fi anti-Ipod machine would ultimately lead to a whole new sub-genre??

Note:
The  original Buddha Machine sounds and the CD spinoffs will be featured in the FOLIO show early 2007.