MDC Interview#58 " Monolog "

Monolog makes music that doesn’t exist yet. Since launching the project in 1999 as an open field of experimentation between his jazz and metal guitar playing roots and interests in electronic synthesis, the Danish-born Berlin-based musician has produced a wide range of explorative records that rewire dancefloor genres like drum & bass, dubstep, breakcore and IDM with classical musicianship and a steeped sense of musicality. The resulting records for labels like Ad Noiseam, Hymen and Murder Channel, as well as Monolog's own label Subtrakt, are simultaneously difficult to define and yet instantly recognisable.

Written through the pandemic from extended recording sessions sequestered in desolate parts of the world, including remote Italian mountains and the freezing Danish coast, Four Four Twenty Twenty processes feelings of isolation and the graceful failure of humanity through Monolg's unique sonic filter. Featuring collaborations with Current Value and Subtrakt signee Atsushi Izumi, the record is both bleak and complex, achingly beautiful and aggressively destructive, often within the same composition. Monolog's tactile, organic sound design and signature use of guitars have been recast here into heady works of drum & bass, heavy metal breakcore and exquisite IDM reprieves. For fans of dark, introspective electronic music and heavy riffs on the dancefoor.

Q. About the Corona from 2020 to the recent past. What were your days like during this period? Did the Corona have any impact on your music?

Initially I thought the pandemic would be a perfect time for writing a lot of music, the whole scenario of a virus sweeping over the planet was from a narrative point of view something that corresponds to a lot of post apocalyptic thoughts I have been having pre pandemic, end of humanity sort of shit. I thought this would fit my lone wolf approach to life, since social interactions have always been quite limited and not very important to me. But basically I ended up in a creative paralysis. Nothing came out, the whisper in the soul was gone and I had nothing to say. Strangely enough collaborating worked really well in this time, with Both Aikin and also for the Diasiva project which i guess points towards the lack of human dynamic and interaction being a pillar in why there was silence in the monolog project.

Instead of just repeating failures and increase frustration with myself, I decided to change paths. My wife used to be semi pro snowboarder, and we ended up in a very strict lock down in the Italian mountains which we could not move from. That year so much snow fell, it was incredible, and the slopes lifts were closed, and we were basically the only ones there - very much like the film the shining, pristine landscape, but constantly walking on the edge of insanity fighting all kinds of demons. She encouraged me to try snowboarding, walking up the mountain with all the gear on your back and ride down in fresh powder snow. This was it for me - finally I could channel all my frustration, fear, hopes, disappointment, loss, aggression and sadness into a bodily activity, and I went all in on this. As the snow melted I replaced the snowboard with my first skateboard setup since some 20 years, being back into shape again enjoying having cleaned up my bodily temple, loosing weight and gaining focus again.

This was the catalyst for me, since the Boardsports are very creative takes to juggling risk and enjoying 'somewhat' controlled near death experiences and all the adrenaline that comes with it, this creative block for my music was crushed and I experienced a slipstream for my musical creativity. The whisper was back, the whimper was gone, I had something to say again, and all the saved up thinking about the situation of these years started to come out as music, and I observed how skating would reinstate the confidence and clear vision to channel it all into music again.

In a way, I entered the pandemic a broken man and felt like a sinking ship but left the pandemic improved with a hunger for life and everything in it.

Q. What is the theme of the "Four Four twenty twenty EP"? What do you express in this EP?

This LP has been a study in creating hand played (not programmed) asymmetric structures that somehow have a very humane and tangible pulse the listenener can interpret in a simplified way. I guess I always want to make the human visible when composing computer music. Like the drum programming on Naiad, which on the surface 'feels' like a 4/4 banger, but if you listen into the actual periods of the tune, it is not confined by a 4/4 structure at all but rush through signatures like 7/8th to 9/13th but somehow still holds together with a perceivable simpler rhythm. It feels a bit like standing very close to a passing high speed train where you recognize glimpses of each part of the train which is complex, but the wind, sound and vibration in the ground overwhelms the senses and your brain reduces the complexity to a simple perception of just a heavy fast machine passing through. This 'paradox' of embedded complexity and organic periods is also part of the composition of the title song, NUX and Paraiah.

The working title was four four twenty twenty, which was something of a narcist number beauty of me turning 44 in the year 2020, but in discussions with Gore Tech about the cover, he coined this as a fighter jet call sign which I will fully credit him for conjuring. It seemed like another stream of creative energy one should simply just enjoy and fold into this release opposed to changing the title to something more less navalent. I totally love the cover concept he came up with and nailed it in one go.

Q. Current Value mastered the "Four Four twenty twenty EP" and is also a featured on "CETACEANS". How did you first meet him? How do you feel about his music? How did "CETACEANS" come together?

I met CV as a part of the Machine Code Duo with Dean Rodell that introduced him in his studio at some point. We also shared quite some playslots at the Subland club and in particular the Burn the machine festival where I met CV several times. I dont even know where to start.. maybe with the uttermost and deep respect for him having defined, redefined, reinvented Drum and Bass music several times with the level of Enginuity and revolutionary approach to a genre that easily gets stuck in genre conform stuff that just needs to work on the dancefloor, he managed (and still manages) to turn that on its head so many times. His beautiful and deep comprehension of harmonics combined with extreme bursts of raw energy is unparalleled. I guess... if I would ever have the privilege of travelling through a black hole, I would let his music bang out on that spaceship crossing the event horizon.

He also mastered my release on Subtrakt 2015 "Eversleep" which Dean Rodell facilitated. I was so Impressed with the result I asked Dean for CV's contact for this release. In that process CV wrote me a message simply saying "I have an idea about the Cetaceans" and we started bouncing files forth and back and it became something very different than it originally was, and it got the characteristic punch and low end effect that all CV's tunes have. I am immensely proud of that collab!, and again happy to see that creative energy both as composition and mastering engineer fold into this release. 

Q. Another collaborator on the "Four Four twenty twenty EP" is Atsushi Izumi. How did you decide to collaborate with him?

He has released an EP called "Snow" on Subtrakt. How do you feel about his music?

Again as with Current Value an artist I have the uttermost respect for, his music impacted me like discovering the lost Atlantis, or mystic origami folded in black paper that you as a listener can carefully unfold and investigate but never reverse engineer. His music has an openness that makes it possible to explore, but with extremely complex internal mechanics. Our collab is also one of the highlights where he took a few of my simple guitar structures and build this quantum mechanic computer around them. I simply love listening to his work and rarely travel anywhere without some of his works in the headphones, and I still enjoy his subtrakt release from 2018 'snow' that still shows me new 'paperfolds' to discover. I am very happy he said yes to collaborate for this special murder channel release and our ongoing conversations over years now where we also dicovered we have a common background in distorted guitars. 

Q. The guitar tone and overall atmosphere of "PARIAH" is very emotional and haunting. How did you come up with this song?

This is not going to be an easy answer. Well my Dad died early 2020 and this is a song for him. He showed me so much music throughout my childhood and we shared love for a deep and melancholic Scandinavian Jazz, where there is a sad amber I cant find elsewhere.

The writing of this is the least intellectualized song of the album and made with a pure but very heavy heart. I had been experimenting with a Drop C tuning on my 6 string ibanez, and more or less recorded the entire song one take and made 3 dubs with voicings and some of the arpeggiated chord fragmentations. I added some sparse drums and atmos, and played a double bass and a piano on top of the entire recording, thats basically the tune.

Q. Tell us about the guitars and setups you use in your music production. What are some of the most important aspects of guitar recording?

So for this record I have been using an Ibanez S-series I have had since almost 30 years, equipped with a fishman midi pickup so I usually dub guitars with synths in one go, to also check the sound has the impact or additional texture I want. In addition an Ibanez 8 string where I exchanged the stock pickups that were surprisingly bad with a set of seymor duncan black winter humbuckers. Lastly I played an Ibanez 6 string bass removing the high string and adding a very thick and deep F# string to fit the tuning of the 8 string guitar, so the bass tuning would be F#, H, E, A, D, G.

Over the years it took to make this record I went from playing a Rectifier head with a 2 x 12" Celestions cab + A fender blues driver that I would mic up, to strictly DI recording. For the DI recording I used a Kempner amp and a few other bits like the AMT Electronics D2 pedal, and software like TH3, Archtype (Neural DSP), and the Diezel Amp on the UAD bundle.

I am usually mixing 2 direct inputs with one Live amplifier where I use panning position and phase tools to place it correctly, with great help of the Eventide H9 stomp box that has been such a good friend for mixing guitars.

The main challenge has always been not to alienate acoustic records on top of an electronic overlay, which means in most cases you have to dial back the intensity of distorted tones quite a bit so there is place for basses and pads, drums and so forth. This is still a journey and I dont think I will ever be happy with only one setup or Amp so I constantly try new things. But I am definitely trying to marry the acoustic and electronic elements in a way it seems consistent and sits within the same sound aesthetic. 

Q. What has been consistent in the Monolog project from the beginning?

Non conformity - its not always pretty or effectful, but it's different. If you hate it, it wont be because it sounds like something you know or heard a million times before. I generally think too few people aspire to have their own sound but this is certainly a consistent core element throughout all my work.

It has never been for the sake of surviving as a pro musician, which means I never had to make any compromises in the music I would make thinking about income, labels, career Latters for which I am happy. I enjoy the absolute freedom this project has been manifest of since day 1.

 Q. About Liza Aikin & Monolog "Until There Was Nothing". Can you tell us about the background behind the creation of this EP? I sense an element of Techno in this EP, were you & Liza trying to create something new "Techno"?

I have always enjoyed excursions to new unexplored areas, and it always nice when someone takes you by the hand and takes you there. This is how this collab felt. I have never dipped into making pure, straight techno but living in berlin for 20 years its impossible to stay unaffected by it. Liza is very active in the Berlin tech scene and endorses an aesthetic of sound we could agree on.

Coming back to the pandemic, we found ourselves locked in together with our laptops, headphones in the middle of nowhere and we decided to kick off the collab and start drawing up some ideas that we would later finalize when we got back to our berlin studios. We never set out to redefine anything new, but this is the middle ground that naturally came out for us. And we were lucky that the EVAR label were so supportive of us exploring that and they were amazing to work with.

She has a very sharp ear for what works in highly repetitive patterns and how a composition has to move, but not too much. Where my role was has been adding filth, grit and insanity to upset these very clean structures that clear cut techno represent in my ears.

We are also working on more new tracks together. 

Q. About Diasiva. How did this project get started? How do you write songs? What are Diasiva's future plans?

Swarm intelligence, the other half of Diasiva, I would consider him family at this point. We have been doing Diasiva since 2011 where we were contracted to play a live gig together as sort of a versus. But it worked out so well that we decided to make a proper project out of it, and have been meeting every thursday since 2011. Musically we know each other so well, which you can see in our live gigs where 2 minds are in perfect sync volleying molotow basslines at the audience. This connection is the same when writing studio tunes - we rarely have much to say when we write music since chances are SI is already doing what I am thinking and vice versa. Though, when we are exploring new styles of music we do have a lot of brainstorming chats how to achieve what we want abnd constantly improve our process of making music.

We write everything from scratch shoulder to shoulder and never work on the Diasive tunes when we are not together. We do have a drop box where we can make a few presets, or drop some field recordings, modular recording takes etc. But thats a key rule of the Project that we build everything in coherent studio sessions.

We have just sent out files for our second full length album which should be out on shiny vinyl this year, and maybe a few gigs to support it. 

Q. What does music/society look like in Berlin these days? What is Berlin like from your point of view?

Its a trainstation as always, many come, many leave. Berlin is experiencing a lot of investment these days from abroad which result in some of creative spaces shut down. A lot of smaller venues suffered during the pandemic and there was a lot of places closing. There was also a lot of promoters that simply stopped, as well as artists and DJ's that went into hiatus. Now new places are opening up, admittedly further away, but the initiative and uncontrollable berlin club scene seems as vibrant and punk as usual.

Berlin is a place where you can live many different lives and there are platforms and people you can share that with. I find myself being here enjoying the platforms and groups I belong to, dnb head, (old) skater, husband and working in the audio industry at Ableton.

Q. You have had a long musical career and produced many masterpieces. But I think there was also a lot of pain behind it. When were the most difficult times? How did you get out of those hard times or slumps?

The 'pain' has been both a blessing and a curse - let me explain: I have always been a bit of a loner and not a part of a scene. Especially in Denmark i spent a lot of time in solitude. Which gave me depth in my thoughts and gave me time to go deep in my gear and technique, but there was also not anyone else around that could pull me back from thoughts of low self esteem, doubt, frustration or simply technical obstacles I could have used a friend to overcome, which are normal reflections most musicians feel at one point or another. Now that I am a part of a scene, I still feel that 'pain' as thoughts that made me strong, assertive and resolute and not falling into despair or doubt so easily. It always helped me to break things down to smaller parts to understand them better and looking at massive monolithic problems overwhelms most people. But dismantling the feelings and the problems in such a monolith makes it easier to find solutions for smaller issues.

A thing that pulled me out of every deadlock has been sabotaging my own process, trying something new every time, never establish too many routines and give yourself space to develop in other directions. In addition, discipline of work, and the resilience in keeping on working.

 Q. Do you experience any pain or suffering in making music? If so, why do you continue? Do you ever feel frustrated or anxious about your music's sales or play counts? What do listeners and the industry mean to you?

Music feels like life, not as a thing or an activity, but as something so fundamentally a part of everything inside of me that I would never consider quitting. It would feel like burying a very fundamental part of myself, like stopping breathing. Its not even a choice. I realize i cant or wont stop. For me it carries so much poison out of my soul, and it is a vital safety valve for all the pressure we experience in todays world.

My music has never been tied to external success. It was never about a listener. It was never about fitting in. It was never about a certain Label or appreciation from a certain scene. And even less about the money coming out of it, or playcounts, or the concept of mass appeal.

I am flattered that someone likes it, that labels sign it, that someone raves to it, but this was always just me expressing myself and exploring technology. For me its about that one person that really likes the music and uses it as a catalyst to overcome something in their own life.

Q. I think your music is very realistic. It is music that can only come from the human imagination. How do you feel about drugs and AI doubling down on human creativity? Is it the right thing to do?

Berlin is a heaven for exploring drugs, but for me more as a listener in the audience. I have found substances to get in the way of a lot of things when composing and defeating the purpose of me making music - it simply sounded like shit. Mostly since it numbs out a lot of finesse and emotions I do not pay attention to under the influence. I see many that write amazing music super fucked up on drugs, and if that works for them, then yes, its the right thing for them. I dont Judge, and a normative answer from me would hold very little meaning for anyone else. I do enjoy a joint a beer when making music when my infamous Danish kick ass coffee wears off (ask anyone who ever visited my studio here in berlin about my coffee 🙂).

I think AI is and will increasingly be a part of my tool chain going forward, but never taking over my humanity in composing music. I could not imagine this tech being very helpful restrained and sandboxed the way we carefully step closer to see it - at this point I see AI drawing reference to, sampling, analyzing materials already made by humans to simulate us. But I do not see AI generate the unknown, the unseen, the unheard but drawing a lot of assimilation references. I can hear people make tracks from sample packs, presets that are sold and known - patterns emerge. AI seems a bit like that to me. its easy to spot a good craftman that lacks originality. I am sure this will change at some point, when AI develops its own aesthetic that is not rooted in human artefacts. 

Q. You have released several albums/EPs in the past as Monolog. Which of them do you particularly like?

Loved all the collabs on Merge (ad noiseam), memories of many studio hours with a lot of people I miss. Eversleep (Subtrakt) felt like a breakthrough I like to remember. Conveyor (Hymen) and Indemnity and oblivion (Hymen) were statements of strong times and good life I like to remember, Same for the the Everything at Zero (Murder Channel). Still listen to the Diasiva 12"'s Asunder (acroplane) and Microplastic (Aboretum), which are absolute bangers.

Every album, EP, single, Collab, remix represents a thought, a little learning, a little victory tied to situations and time horizons from the 24 years I have been releasing music for. Even the debut is a time capsule, a witness where I was, how I was working and what music my imagination was trying to fill the world with. Looking back on the entire line, I am happy about my progress, where I came from and what I became, I can hear myself living my life in these albums.

Q. What is your upcoming schedule? Finally, a message to our readers

So here in April there is the Q release on Murder Channel. Followed by the LP on Murder Channel In May on Murder Channel as well.

For Diasiva we have a full length album coming out on Beduin this year, where we might play a few release shows following that.

Also, the Label 'I shall sing until my land is free' is currently pressing an 12" EP release later this year too.

Thank for reading and for showing interest in the log of the mono, I was happy to get a chance to put some of these thoughts out there.