THE LIVE PERFORMANCE PROBLEM
ROBERT HENKE'S MONODECK OFFERS A WELCOME ALTERNATIVE TO THE LAPTOP EXPERIENCE.
I was at Bloc Weekend last, err, weekend. It was a strange experience to say the least: three nights at Pontins, that enduring luminary of British holidaying, with three arenas playing host to the cream of electronic music, both past and present. All in all it was a memorable trip and well worth the large fee, but one thing struck me, and I wasn’t alone: watching a guy in specks standing motionless behind a laptop isn’t always conducive to dancing.
Playing live can mean many things. At one end of the spectrum it can mean bringing along a bunch of synths, a few outboard effects units and even a few ‘real’ instruments and letting loose on stage. And at the other, it can mean doing the aforementioned ‘still’ thing. Some of the people we saw were playing quality music, but they may as well have been checking their emails for all we knew. This is the current conundrum facing electronic musicians today. Often driven by the simple fact that they have rent to pay and mouths to feed, the ‘producer’ is thrust on stage and, for an hour or more, becomes the ‘performer’.
It’s a conundrum that has troubled Robert Henke, a German musician who records much of his material under the name Monolake (see him performing at Bloc above), for many years. He recalls a time when the earliest electronic recordings were played back on tape, but he appreciates that simply pressing play, and maybe handing out information on what people are about to hear, just isn’t an option. Punters want to be entertained. Henke explains the problem:
“If the tape concert is not an option, the key questions are: how can I really perform and interact on stage, and how can I make the audience aware of what goes on without having them read a long statement or listen to a ten minute introduction?”
Indeed. So rather than accept the limitations of the innocent laptop (it’s not its fault after all), Henke decided to create his own live tool which has now been updated from Monodeck to Monodeck II (above). It gives him all the live facilities of his laptop but with the added spontaneity and physical interaction that people want to
see. And while every other act at Bloc was positioned high up on the stage, Monolake chose to be down low in the sound booth at the same level as the crowd. By all accounts, his was a performance and not an email session. It was an awesome reinterpretation of live performance for the 21st Century and totally unique in its nature.
Nevertheless, it didn’t stop a friend waking up on the last day and remarking sarcastically to the rest of us, “Dammit today’s gonna be good. I wonder if anyone's got the latest Dell...”
For more on the problem of live performance check out Henke’s little mini-thesis here.
report experian
I was there and completely agree with this intriguing piece - Monolake's extra effort, including his epic interaction with the crowd as well as taking the time to BUILD his own, purpose built equipment, is the sort of stuff that will entice people to peruse techno further.
Some of the laptop gazers almost managed to turn me (a self confessed, mono-cultured, techno fan) away from the dancefloor and towards the warm beer being served in the next door Wetherspoons.
bull shit, your there for the music, if not go watch some prog rock
do some more research
Yeah I was there for the music, and I enjoyed the music, from Sleep Archive on his laptop to a the full on UR experience. I was merely stating that it was good to see people who take the act of live performance differently to everyone else. Of course we're there for the music, but if the performance can improve the sensation that the music delivers then so much the better. Henke does that with his Monodeck; others don't do that with their laptops. Neither is wrong. And no one is saying one's music is better than the other's; only that it's good to see people doing things differently.