Monoton - Monotonprodukt 07 20y ++

Born from the desire to reintroduce on the market an outstanding, yet surprisingly unknown work of the 1980s, this ORAL release is also the result of a dialogue with hypermedia researcher and artist Konrad Becker, which occurred during chance, yet fruitful meetings. Sometimes in the path of a music lover and record collector, a work will beckon you, imposing itself with its singularity, depth and timelessness. Monotonprodukt 07, produced in 1982, is such a work.

The original Monoton album, Monotonprodukt 07…
… is so alive with the pulses that triggered many Electronicas to come, from Techno through Trance to Mego's creeping static, you could make a case for Becker's guruhood. Yet, for all its prescient washed out tones, threadbare textures and Minimalist rigour, it has the edge on much that followed. Adopting an imperious art stance towards mainstreams and margins alike, Becker cast a cold analytic eye over Electronica's urfathers, picking up on Suicide's jittertronic urgency, if not their melodrama, and DAF's throbbing sequencers, but with the sex threat removed, which he patched into his own crackling circuits, hissing vistas and tumbling beatstreams.
The Wire, #175, sept. 1998, 100 records that set the world on fire (when no one was listening)

Monoton, Monotonprodukt 07 20y++
Monotonprodukt 07 20y++ is, in agreement with its author Konrad Becker, more than a CD re-release of the original two vinyl records. It is instead an updated work, subjected to sound digitalisation to bring out sounds and effects that would have been impossible to achieve when it first came out – the bass has the intended amplitude while high frequencies truly rejuvenate the whole. The author is finally able to hear what he was hoping for back then but could not achieve.

Prompted by an anthropological approach and a historical updating operation, this new work could be perceived as a work developed over a period of 20 years, in full respect of Konrad Becker’s creative process. And so Monotonprodukt 07 becomes Monotonprodukt 07 20y++.

This is the first re-release of Montonprodukts on ORAL. The second one is the number 02, the blau LP, rer-released June 2006, another must have for everyone interested in the history of electronic music.