Most people come back off hollibobs with a wicker donkey, tan-lines, or a purse of manky coins to show for it. Not Monolake’s Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke. After their trip to China, the German duo amassed dozens of DATs of ambient noises, field-recorded around the streets, woods and tunnels of Hong Kong and Guangzhou.
These audio postcards weren’t just mementos of their travels. They’d provide the essential audio glue that would finally bind together the sonic sketches and analogue live jams they’d been making. Bringing these tracks together as an artist album, that’d go on to be hailed as a landmark in the evolution of early experimental dub techno.
“It was the most important album in musical history,” says Robert Henke, tongue firmly in-cheek. “I don’t know why anyone afterwards still tried to compose. That chapter was closed.”
The first chapter, however, goes back to when Monolake were asked by their minimal techno chums, Basic Channel, for beats for their fledgling record imprint.
“They wanted music for their new Chain Reaction label,” says Henke. “We played them Cyan and a few more, which all got released. And when it became album time, we augmented them with these field recordings we’d captured during the International Computer Music Conference we were attending in Hong Kong, hence the name.”
Henke and Behles had a hoot adding the field recordings to the body of ambient material they’d already laid down, with tones and textures of a Chinese transit system
