Monolake - Archaeopteryx

The air is damp, pouring rain hits the melting rocks and vaporises in dramatic hisses. The colors are spectacular, orange-red fluids bubbling in slow motion, dark blue water filling deep caves, nearly black clouds tower at the horizon, sudden patches of bright blue sky open up high above, white fog everywhere, an expressionist painting emerges and reconfigures, long before painters do exist. Everything is constantly moving, breathing, transforming.

Monolake - Archaepteryx album cover

2020 | imbalance | ML 035

CD 1

01 Gantt Exodus 6:58
02 Infernal Limit 8:36
03 Triode Univec 4:39
04 Transient Noire 3:15
05 Dirac Onyx 4:17
06 Pelton Rota 3:18
07 Clockwerk Fatigue 4:24
08 Phaenon Ono 4:04
09 Ircks Argle 5:14
10 Anamorph Iris 4:25

CD 2

11 Espace Fourier 4:45
12 Sinc Response 4:37
13 Plateaux Orthogonal 7:23
14 Orbit Incomplete 6:27
15 Prime Declick 2:04
16 Delta Overload 3:51
17 Alu Minimum 6:08
18 Specimen Fractal 5:13
19 Allure Publison 5:54

Constructed by Robert Henke.
Release date: November 6th 2020
Formats: digital, limited edition of 200 double CD box

Buy at Bandcamp

Monolake - Archaepteryx CD case

The big bird takes shelter under a fern, carefully navigating in unstable land. In the distance, another smaller creature tries to escape the water, but fails.

Nearby, the probe is stuck in the mud, with its shiny surface and its perfect curvature. A masterpiece of engineering, unfortunately in this very moment becoming dysfunctional, one gamma ray too many, and a nanoscale structure located at a critical signal path forever unlearns how to do its job.

The bird is hungry.

Monolake - Archaepteryx CD print

Miller decides to skip his second coffee, he feels overly agitated these days anyway. Too many meetings, too much administrative work. Too many humans too far away from the station with too many opinions.

He climbs up the metal ladder, tries to ignore the icy wind, stares at the camera and is waiting for the click. Someone has left a note on his desk, "had again hundreds of errors on A-78, replace?". He takes the paper, carefully reconfigures it into a tiny yellow ball and misses the trash by ten centimetres.

The big bird slowly unfolds her wings, looks down at her claws, and decides to get rid of the logging device. A few small stones are rolling down the rock, playing a beautiful and complex rhythmical motive but no one listens.

Then she finally decides to ascend. The clouds are getting more dense, rapidly building up giant structures, ready for the next big thunderstorm to come, sending down ice cubes and fire all at once.

Monolake - Archaepteryx CD print

The data packet is short and seems insignificant, just one pulse too much on a green LED in a server room. It takes the first few hubs, until it finally gets corrected by a slightly too smart AI.

The big bird glances one last time at the morning sun, satisfied, and ceases to exist.

instruments

Ableton Live10 Operator Wavetable Alesis Quadraverb AMS RMX 16 Celemony Melodyne Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 12 Dynacord DRP-20 Ensoniq ASR-10R Eventide Eclipse, H3000 Henke GranulatorII Lexicon PCM-80 Linn modified Linn Drum New England Digital Synclavier II Oberheim Xpander Palm Products Germany Wave 2.3 Publison DHM-89-B Quantec QRS Sequential Circuits Prophet VS Yamaha SY77 DX7 a few Eurorack Modules and recordings of various orchestral percussion.

credit

Marko Nikodijevic, I learned so much from you about musical form, structure and gestures. Without you, this album would not exist. Thank you.