Disquiet

Right on schedule, another month yields another free track from Monalake, aka Robert Henke. “Index I” was first a 12″ and later appeared on Hong Kong, the debut Monolake album, back when the act was a duo, before Henke’s partner, Gerhard Behles, left in order to start up the audio-software company that became Ableton Live. Every month, Henke posts a free download on his website, monolake.de, and for June it’s a cleaned up edit of “Index I,” which is mostly of interest for how, over time, it has come to sound considerably less minimal. Monolake were among the originators of minimal techno, a music that removed the gloss from house and left just the pulsing infrastructure — their early works were the audio equivalent of The Lonely Crowd, picturing a dance space as a zone of interpersonal desolation. Per the website’s rules, there’s no direct link in this post to the MP3; just head to the URL link above to locate the file.

By Marc Weidenbaum