A new album from Robert Henke's Monolake project is always a cause for celebration. "Ghosts" is the second installment of an intended trilogy, the first being 2009's "Silence". There is a sense that events are unfolding, there is a story unfolding, but its hard to say what exactly it is. "Ghosts" creates a strange and compelling sonic journey, that gets deeper and vaster, the more often you delve into its depths.

This is some of Monolake's most rhythmic work in a hot minute, primed for adventurous dance floors everywhere. Almost every track is rooted down with a smooth, low bottom end, that lays most of the monsterstep hacks to waste. Henke's produtions are always clear, tight, and crisp. Flickering around the margins, clattering steel and tinkling glass flutter like half-remembered dreams, in classic 90s Rephlex fashion. Intricate as a swiss watch, but funky as a Prince concert. "Ghosts" sounds equally good on a robust club sound-system as in yr living room, on a good pair of headphones, where countless thousands of microscopic details emerge and reveal themselves.

It is this care and attention to detail that makes Robert Henke's work stand head and shoulders above the competition. As one of the inaugural inventors of the notorious Ableton Live software, he understands sound on a molecular level. The amount of stretching, fading, warping, panning, down-sampling, up-sampling, and spatial reconstruction is breathtaking. While he has an engineer's mind, he said in an interview with Self-Titled Magazine, "If I had to choose between the perfect concept and the perfect emotion, I'd choose the perfect emotion." Monolake creates music for cyborgs. He makes the machines summon his dreams.

"Ghosts" is mostly ominous and dystopian, somber and reflective. It will never be mainstream club fodder. It is intended for deep listeners and thinkers. Those that take the time to investigate "Ghosts" abandoned space station, the rewards are many and vast. Robert Henke has raised the bar for fellow electronic music producers almost impossibly high.

Pure.
Glowing.
Genius.