monoton

konrad becker...

glad you liked the cd!

i remember colin faver (or dale?) used to play his later, more rave-y stuff on kiss, which is how i first heard monoton, obviously not realising he'd been doing this kind of minimal pan-sonic / oval - type minimal stuff for so long.

i love how the early records sound icy cold, but also clunky and sown together, all joins visible.

his techno stuff is like a really uncomfortable collision between cold experimentalism and whoop-whoop belgian rave, maybe like some of the more ravey kompakt releases (dj koze or something) i think two of his tracks came out on an offshoot label of r&s, and he released some weird gabber stuff on mokum. 'tronic subrise' (i think) is the really groovy one (have to dig them out)

i think he was also heavily involved in the association of autonomous astronauts (eden will know all about that), and with net / activist type things in vienna, etc. also saw him talk at the tate modern a couple of years ago at this wanky conference about deleuze and he was far and away the most interesting speaker.

www.t0.or.at/~konrad/

been meaning to buy this, thankers for the prompt

another checkbook-busting order to electrocd.com

Konrad is one of the most interesting people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

wow always some new old shit I've never heard of

Sound links please?

got my copy last night... glad I finally ordered it (my curiosity was peaked when it was posted to the ILM top 100 ambient list)

you can hear how it relates to the contemporary sequencer dance music of the time but instead of building the sound up with extra production he just smears the lines out into huge flat monster landscapes. probably a modest home studio setup but he knew what not to do, & it definitely foreshadows things like Basic Channel & Panasonic, the results are extremely austere. I also like the occasional fuzzy mumbled vocals, very disorienting

makes me imagine what might have happened if Asmus Tietchens had continued making pop records like <i>Spat Europa</i> with the expanded sound vocabulary of his later abstract & drone records

not sure if I would place it on the same level as things like Schnitzler's <i>Ballet Statique</i> (which is similiarly minimal) or the Tietchens or Cluster's <i>Curiosum</i> (another vanguard foray into lo-fi stricture) but then again it's very different from any of those records and just the fact that I find myself bringing them up is a good sign. The John Bender records come to mind as well, but much less personal, more austere

monotonprodukt 2 has been reissued! and 7 repressed. maybe old news, i wasn't aware of this. nice and terrible, because i have just ordered something else and depleted my funds.

bruno said:

monotonprodukt 2 has been reissued! and 7 repressed. maybe old news, i wasn't aware of this. nice and terrible, because i have just ordered something else and depleted my funds.

Click to expand...

Yep, that sounds about right. i just ordered another batch of Basic Channel-related records...so Monoton will have to wait...

I have Monotonprodukt 07 20y++ but I didn't know that Blau even existed. Is it similar to the second record?

Great that this is being re-released. 02 is more abrasive and lo-fi sounding than 07, much longer tracks, with a kind of treacly dub / recorded in a cardboard box type vibe. still wicked though, but i prefer #07.

Payed stupid money on ebay to get this record a while back too. doh!

Listening now - this is pretty amazing