Robert Henke Is on Bandcamp

In a welcome development, Robert Henke (aka Monolake) started a page on Bandcamp today. There’s just one release currently, a dreamy 10-minute drone titled “Oomoo.” The sinuous palindrome of its title mirrors the flowing vibe of the piece. The name was familiar to me, and then I realized that I wrote about the track when it was first released, back in 2007, as a free MP3 download from his monolake.de website, which no longer seems to be operational. (He was releasing a free MP3 a month back then.) Instead, he makes his home on the web at roberthenke.com, as well as, now, at roberthenke.bandcamp.com. That’s the same year, 2007, that SoundCloud was founded, and it’s a year before Bandcamp was founded, and longer still before either became default locations for musicians to post their recordings. The track “Oomoo,” meanwhile, sounds as fresh today as it did upon its release. As I described it at the time: “it’s a film-score-ready drone that moves like a single sheet of material buffeted by wind, from rapturous peaks to rumbling valleys. Listening to it in a car alone after dark will turn any routine drive into a scene from a Michael Mann movie.” I don’t usually post tracks twice on Disquiet.com, but this seemed like a reasonable occasion to do so. Very early on in the Downstream series here I accidentally did, because so little music was freely available and I’d forgotten. A reader at the time helpfully pointed it out. Technically, the track “Oomoo” remains a free download, because it’s set at “name your price,” but do consider chipping in a little.