Monoton’s 1982 Lost Techno Classic Reissued

Monoton's 'Monotonprodukt 07' is one of the building blocks of techno, a foundation point that has gone on to influence generations. It's also little known outside a small circle of devotees, with Wire naming it back in 1998 as one of the "100 records that set the world on fire (when no one was listening)". The original album was limited to 500 copies, and, predictably enough, is going to set you back a weeks rent to get a copy. Now Desire, the label that first released Konrad Becker's Monoton project, is reissuing the album on a double vinyl picture disc, once more limited to 500 copies.

We'd say the decription The Wire offered back in the 90s is a perfect intro to the record, so hear it is again –

"… 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."

Stream below, and pre-order direct from Desire here.