If an inclusion into The Wire’s list of “100 records that set the world on fire (when no one was listening)” means an automatic spot in permanent obscurity, it does also give Monotonprodukt07 a free pass to avant-garde legitimatization in the same broad-stroke. Such obscurity also breeds a reputation for Konrad Becker’s masterpiece into a cultish following. A following that I fell entrapped by when critic Matthew Ingram not only called the record “the square root of Basic Channel, Kompakt and Oval” but also “a very strong candidate for the most important record of the last 30 years”—seemingly hyperbolic statements that both piqued interest and skepticism. But even after my initial pair of spins, I knew I couldn’t refuse.

With Monoton’s constant pulses of arpeggiating analog synths stringing together much of Monotonprodukt07, the album has an uncanny sense of sterility and rigidity that is not only furthered by Becker’s interests in mathematics and sound, but also as a metaphor running through the song titles (ie. “Soundsequence” & “Root of 1=1”). But there’s a tactile expanse that belies a merely frigid barren; echoes, drones, and fat dubbed oceanic waves of analog sound complicate the strictly dystopic tone of the tracks. Becker’s intention of an “integrated sound massage” certainly comes across with the sensuous drones of “New” and acid-tinged pounding of “Where Am I?” Littering the sheen of the underpinned rhythms with trance-inducing murmurs, Becker’s vocals float in and out from ether, sounding less like mere disembodied voices than full-on séances. Rather than just an ominous tone throughout, there’s a variety of trance-states that each track achieves, from the motorik-lite of “Root of 1=1” to Becker’s curiously nonchalant chant of “a fish in water thirsty” in “Wasser.”

While easier to trace paths back to Monotonprodukt’s influence on minimal techno, with the austere chic of Richie Hawtin and the label Sahko as the first of many strains to spring to mind, it becomes profoundly more difficult to explain why this didn’t “set the world on fire” itself in its time. Perhaps the album’s trance-like meditations transferred directly to its reception, with it spurning an interest that is more a fixation than an explosion. But Monotonprodukt07 is a fixation that haunts, not aging a day since it was first released—instead caressing and completely disregarding the effects of time itself. The re-release of the album sound especially impacting with a nice digital re-mastering for CD in 2003, retitled Monoproduckt07 20y++.

Monoton / Monotonprodukt 07
[Nate DeYoung]