A new release from ambient techno/dub wizards Monolake (Henke and Behles) is always cause for celebration around these parts, especially when said release is such an outstanding slab of dark, often industrial ambient techno. Enter “Silence,” the outfit’s newest long player for Imbalance Computer Music. It’s just under an hour’s worth of ever-fluctuating atmospheres, thick, hazy beats, and a slew of haunted, extra-terrestrial sounds and textures.

Silence, the sixth full-length by Robert Henke under the Monolake name, is quite a welcome departure from his usual four-on-the-floor techno approach. It clearly takes cues from recent developments in dubstep and its variants, while not sounding like his entry in an already swollen genre. Instead, Henke combines a dubstep-informed rhythmic palette with atmospheric elements from the installation-based works released under his own name; the ominous drones and dripping water sounds at the beginning of the album recall his recent Indigo Transform CD. Silence maintains a balance between field-recorded sounds and complex half-time beats, making it more of an engaging hour-long listen than the last few Monolake albums.

Henke has gone to great lengths to describe his decision to use no compression for this project, so as to preserve the dynamics and allow the loud and soft to be quite pronounced. This technique serves the material well, as sounds of percussive metal ratchet across the stereo field during "Far Red" and "Internal Clock." Although Henke's achievements include software development, he comes across as more of a composer than a sound designer, and there is a tension present throughout Silence that makes it more than a study in dynamics or an exercise in beat construction. The zither-like melody heard during "Infinite Snow" is reminiscent of "The Box" by Orbital, but is re-contextualized in a cavernous post-apocalyptic environment. The slow-sweeping strings in "Reconnect" recall (are sampled from?) Dead Can Dance's epic "The Protagonist," as contrasted with the rhythmic language of Autechre's classic LP5.

Although Torsten Profrock (T++) is not credited literally on this release, Henke's longstanding association with him ensures that his influence is present, mostly in the propulsive, yet restrained rhythmic sequences. It's clear that these guys have been paying attention to the more leftfield producers associated with dubstep (Martyn, Peverelist, Appleblim et al.), but it's the larger context they place this influence in which makes Silence the first fully-realized post-dubstep album of importance.

-Marc Moeller (February 3, 2010)