Ambient? Chill out? Unfortunately nowadays these ones are already hackneyed notions and everybody understands them in his own way - mostly ethno-trans smooth music or indiscriminate downtempo. Although the beginning of that stream was far more interesting than it turned to be.So, Monolake - Gobi. The desert EP is the album constructed as a slow chill out trip from the past through a desert on a mechanical dirigible. Initially Monolake planned to work with different musical ganres at the same time with the releases of dance music. Robert Henke(one of the project's members) recorded and released the albums of another style - he created landscape drone without any rhythm, soundscapes - true dissolvent music, not quite music created by human for human or machine music.
Monolake was always concentrated on creation and development of new trajectories for their further work in different spheres. Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles are interested not only in recording and releasing of albums but also in the development of software for creating such music. For example Gerhard Behles is an engineer and founder of Ableton - programs popular all over the world and bought by famous musicians and designers. Investigations of the sound's nature became the source of inspiration for the musicians. They research the sound itself, rhythm, structure, interaction of sound and its souce.
So it goes with this perfect work of 99, still new and interesting one - Gobi. The desert EP. The album includes only one track lasting for almost 40 minutes - takeoff-flight-landing. Classic scheme suiting both for live-set of club musicians and for creating conceptual works.
The album starts with light crackles on the whole panorama, such crackles and hissing form music - there is no melody, just light atmosphere of pads and anthropogenic audio-design. The entire composition Gobi is a flight-trip - music for light sleep after dancing in night club - extremely home, warm music filled with the hot desert wind. If we listen attentively we'll hear the mechanical noises of the balloon. Pure minimalism - accidential traps of propellers, ambient buildings of clouds, pictures on the sand's surface - total immitation of a flight. The only difference between a real desert and Gobi and Monolake is that in the album we travel through the desert created by the imagination of the project's authors. It secretely comes off the scene as well as it appeared there at the very beginning. Only those who remember the past are able to create the future.