Monolake Monolake - Ghosts

The thing with monolake is his sound design is amazing, but the music/composition itself rarely leaves me impressed. it feels "sterile", kind of like richard devine in that respect. I'm sure I'll like Ghosts a lot though

  On 2/27/2012 at 12:16 AM, Joseph said:

The thing with monolake is his sound design is amazing, but the music/composition itself rarely leaves me impressed. it feels "sterile", kind of like richard devine in that respect. I'm sure I'll like Ghosts a lot though

Yeah its more about mastering and synthesis than great melodies.

Great melodies are overrated. Long live the third wave!!

Seriously though, melodies or not melodies, the soundplay on this is pretty incredible.

  On 2/27/2012 at 12:16 AM, Joseph said:

The thing with monolake is his sound design is amazing, but the music/composition itself rarely leaves me impressed.

Even with Momentum? Excentric is a masterpiece I think. Not sure I'll ever get bored of that track.

Few tracks in and Ghosts is good, already miles ahead of Silence which I despised... pretty much for the reason you said.

Phenomenon was just fantastic! Digging the other tracks too but that one especially stood out to me.

I agree that Monolake is a bit cold and sterile, it makes it hard to really love and enjoy all of his stuff. But Silence was really good, I loved the mysterious and ghostly atmosphere of it, so I`m interesting in buying this. Is it similar? Very good?

This is probably my favorite track on the album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwMzmona8bQ

Ghosts

Lilith

Aligning the Daemon

Hitting the Surface

are great too.

  On 2/29/2012 at 12:32 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

  On 2/27/2012 at 12:16 AM, Joseph said:

The thing with monolake is his sound design is amazing, but the music/composition itself rarely leaves me impressed. it feels "sterile", kind of like richard devine in that respect. I'm sure I'll like Ghosts a lot though

 

henke even admits this. i don't think there's anything wrong with that though...both monolake and richard devine work more with "sounds" than "music" so on that level it doesn't bother me how he likes to string them together. go back and listen to occam on hongkong - it's just a kick, a hat, a snare and two different synth chords plugging away for about 7 minutes. just by varying the effects on these simple elements he is able to create enough interest to sustain the listener's attention over the whole track, who needs chord structures and hooks when you can pull that off?

Agreed about hongkong, i was really just talking about his more recent stuff.

Anyone got the 24-bit version?

It's funny, because no one element of Monolake's music is amazing. Drums are pretty straight forward sounding, the sound design is subtle and never really jaw dropping, and the tracks don't have much going in the way of in depth composition and progression... like someone said, it's a lot of subtle recombining of elements.... but together, all of these elements are SO FUCKING GOOD. It really is about the balance of all of these things, and that is what he is the master of. Regardless of any one tiny part... on a whole he is the master of taking you into his world.

This is why he is one of my favorite artists.

  On 3/1/2012 at 12:00 AM, Kcinsu said:

It's funny, because no one element of Monolake's music is amazing. Drums are pretty straight forward sounding, the sound design is subtle and never really jaw dropping, and the tracks don't have much going in the way of in depth composition and progression... like someone said, it's a lot of subtle recombining of elements.... but together, all of these elements are SO FUCKING GOOD. It really is about the balance of all of these things, and that is what he is the master of. Regardless of any one tiny part... on a whole he is the master of taking you into his world.

 

This is why he is one of my favorite artists.

Quoted for truth!

Yeah Kcinsu, that's a solid post.

  On 3/1/2012 at 12:00 AM, Kcinsu said:

It's funny, because no one element of Monolake's music is amazing. Drums are pretty straight forward sounding, the sound design is subtle and never really jaw dropping, and the tracks don't have much going in the way of in depth composition and progression... like someone said, it's a lot of subtle recombining of elements.... but together, all of these elements are SO FUCKING GOOD. It really is about the balance of all of these things, and that is what he is the master of. Regardless of any one tiny part... on a whole he is the master of taking you into his world.

 

This is why he is one of my favorite artists.

This doesn't apply to Momentum I don't think, the elements sound great on their own terms - combined they make an amazing album. Same goes to Interstate.

After a few listens I think Ghosts trumps Silence by a margin, but is still light years behind his other stuff.

Whoever says Monolake sounds sterile, clearly haven't listened to Interstate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCZbewytzME

Nice interview with Monolake on the Bleep Blog.

  On 3/1/2012 at 4:43 PM, Npoess said:

Whoever says Monolake sounds sterile, clearly haven't listened to Interstate.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCZbewytzME

I think people are saying that his newer output has this sterile vibe to it. Interstate is after all over 10 years ago.

I don't find Interstate sterile at all. But I don't know anything about music.

  On 3/1/2012 at 10:18 AM, Obel said:

  On 3/1/2012 at 12:00 AM, Kcinsu said:

It's funny, because no one element of Monolake's music is amazing. Drums are pretty straight forward sounding, the sound design is subtle and never really jaw dropping, and the tracks don't have much going in the way of in depth composition and progression... like someone said, it's a lot of subtle recombining of elements.... but together, all of these elements are SO FUCKING GOOD. It really is about the balance of all of these things, and that is what he is the master of. Regardless of any one tiny part... on a whole he is the master of taking you into his world.

 

This is why he is one of my favorite artists.

 

This doesn't apply to Momentum I don't think, the elements sound great on their own terms - combined they make an amazing album. Same goes to Interstate.

 

After a few listens I think Ghosts trumps Silence by a margin, but is still light years behind his other stuff.

I was speaking in general. Momentum does have more going on in it than his others.

  On 2/27/2012 at 3:03 PM, Obel said:

  On 2/27/2012 at 12:16 AM, Joseph said:

The thing with monolake is his sound design is amazing, but the music/composition itself rarely leaves me impressed.

 

Even with Momentum? Excentric is a masterpiece I think. Not sure I'll ever get bored of that track.

 

Few tracks in and Ghosts is good, already miles ahead of Silence which I despised... pretty much for the reason you said.

yep. yep. yep. Excentric one of my top electronic tracks ever.

also silence sucked and this is much better. 2009 was pretty late to have sooo much stock apple computer voice speaking all over your record

Well... After I've been listening to this for a while, I probably have to agree some of you after all. This release it kind of a letdown.

The only tracks I still think are great are: Lilith, Ghosts, Aligning the Daemon and The Existence of Time.

The rest is slightly meh.

anyone know where this CD is in stock in the uk? Was late ordeing as was on my honeymoon when it came out and know my order on amazon has been delayed further and no where else seems to have it! Guess i could just get the mp3 but wanted it on CD

Try eBay and Discogs marketplace.

Cheers for your reply but just got the mp3's in the end, listening now and sounding very nice so far.

  On 3/25/2012 at 8:09 PM, kirm said:

anyone know where this CD is in stock in the uk? Was late ordeing as was on my honeymoon when it came out and know my order on amazon has been delayed further and no where else seems to have it! Guess i could just get the mp3 but wanted it on CD

I bought this at Honest Jon's Records. Received it in the mail yesterday

So... people still digging this album?

I've got to admit I forgot it even was released.