(09.21.08) History looms large lately in the post-techno hinterland. This year saw archaeology in Cologne unearthing old Gas works for a quadryptych exhibition, and excavations in Berlin bringing forth twin assemblages of classic Basic Channel twelve-transmissions. And we have Robert Henke embarked on his own small-scale resanitisation of his artefacts, as, following the recently re-issued remastered version of Monolake’s Interstate album, comes this remodelling of the project’s founding full-length release, Hongkong. Back in 1997, it compiled several seminal 12″s of experimental post-techno Henke recorded together with then sidekick, Gerhard Behles, for Basic Channel’s Chain Reaction sub-label. So what’s the (hi)story behind its re-release, and does it sound any good at a distance of over a decade?
The “goodness” question is the hardest to address. Though ostensibly privileged by the critical vantage point offered by a distance of years, appraisal of BC/CR-related work is an invidious exercise, obscured as it is by a huge cloud of knowing, and the shadow cast by its massive influence and kudos; it towers over the whole of the more ‘experimental’ end of the post-millenial techno enterprise, in particular the mnml movement of recent fashion-fad-fetish (Berghain and beyond), as well as the emergent New Wave of Dub-techno (Quantec et al., via Deepchord/Echospace). With its commingling of pre-fab stylings, its cold-eyed minimalist abstraction of Jamaican studio science, and remote Detroit spinnings, and an aesthetic bound up in cold metal casing and limited runs, the BC/CR axis became an iconic, and as such virtually untouchable, representation of serious uncompromising intelligent techno (sic). The fact that Henke soon moved on from the stable to found his own label doesn’t negate his location within its vanguard.
So to history, and to Hongkong. 1996 found Henke and Behles attending the International Computer Music Conference there. Henke captured field recordings around the place (and in China’s Guangzhou), and the inspiration from this trip carried over and imbued the atmosphere and mood of the music created subsequently; when compiling those early Monolake vinyl releases to album, the original songs were re-tooled using field recording-derived material, and a further closing track based on a subway train recording added. The titling of the album then seemed only fitting, notwithstanding that the Asian flavors were reduced largely to sprinklings and drizzlings – dressings for the salad rather than part of the substance of the salad itself. Like Interstate, Hongkong has been remastered, though the gains claimed for this process by Henke are not that perceptible on initial listening (removal of the track “Index I” is more so, however, Henke feeling it to be incongruent, so heads up to those looking for an updated replica of the original release: this isn’t it).
For all that it is in the shadow of BC/CR’s great tradition, an attempt at simple description and impression of this particular exhibit should still be essayed. Surveyed from beyond later exponents, it seems sparser, more ambient, or perhaps just softer and more ‘natural’ for all its sci-fi-exotica. Certainly there is less of the steely semi-industrial edge that was to characterize later Monolake (esp. Momentum and Polygon Cities). The “Lantau/Macau/Arte/Occam” quartet are the meat, and indeed constitute the moment when the pair found their feet and a distinctive voice that set them apart from later Reaction-aries. Here, especially on the first three of these four, they locate points at which to insert their architectural sensibilities and beat science into a rich vein to produce a field-flecked tech-psychedelia that drips with strange delays and odd sonorities. Its dynamic is not that of a literalist techno 4/4, but a slow-stepping offbeat electro-skank hybrid. Kingston smoke suffusing the Menschmaschine. “Cyan,” on the other hand, the first single and most obviously club-derived piece, motors along (under-)powered in its floorist flight by a rather weedy representative of the aforementioned 4/4 kick, flapping gesturally at the upper end of the accepted scale of techno bpms today, sounding, frankly, weak-kneed. A better take on something similar is “Occam” – in some ways a blueprint for Chain Reactions to come, with its dub-fuelled echo chamber-bound synth stabs and clattering panning percussion providing audio-narcosis. All in all, Hongkong Remastered still stands up as a work of considerable resonance and reward, its lengthy sequences and febrile sound forging suggestive of questing spirits adrift and wandering through the pulse and atmo of an alien – though never alienating – late-night metropolis.
Hongkong Remastered is out now on Monolake.
