One person dropped to the ground. Another was dancing widely. A couple next to me left minutes into the performance complaining of ear damage. My companion fell asleep. These were just a few of the reactions happening around me on Saturday evening at Robert Henke’s strange and exhilarating “Lumière” performance, part of the month-long Red Bull Music Academy, an annual festival of adventurous music events sponsored by the energy drink company.
Henke, who has been recording music under the Monolake moniker since that late 1990s, is a hero among electronic music nerds. Along with his records, initially released and typically associated with the Chain Reaction label — which helped define what is now referred to as minimal techno — Henke also has a background in engineering and has juggled both technical and artistic projects for his entire career. With Gerhard Behles and Bernd Roggendorf, he helped create and design the Ableton software that has become de rigueur among electronic musicians and deejays (if you’re a musician using a laptop, you’re probably using Ableton), and is known for constructing his own instruments and musical tools, which give his recordings and performances a unique sound and vision.
“Lumière,” which was performed at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, is the result of months of research by Henke on lasers. Yes, lasers. The idea was to produce a laser light show accompanied by music, but this isn’t “Dark Side of the Moon” at the planetarium. First, the result is more abstract. While the typical laser light show set to music uses the songs as a narrative map, essentially creating images with lasers to tell a story, Henke is more interested in the rhythmic potential of the images. The patterns created by the lasers are not dictated by words (Henke’s music has no lyrics), but by the sounds themselves.
And the music itself is more visceral and pulsating. At times, the rumble of the bass notes vibrated throughout my ribcage. While the typical laser light show is meant to be viewed in relaxed contemplation, and the traditional stage visuals are meant to accompany music but not divert attention from the artist on stage, Henke’s performance was all about how it’s experienced by the audience. And, as noted above, the experience ranged tremendously. It was easy to become lost in the lights, which flickered and bounced around the giant screen on stage, or be pushed and pulled by the music, which was so loud and penetrating that is was almost impossible to not feel bullied by the sound. Enjoyable might not be the word for a performance like “Lumière,” and it’s almost impossible to imagine somebody wanting to have the experience more than once.
In a recent conversation posted on electronic music website Resident Advisor, Henke talked about the balance of the technical and creative impulses, and how the idea for the performance was to not just have it be technically impressive but aesthetically pleasing. As an end result, he was successful on both fronts. But as something to return to again and again, whose aesthetic pleasures can be experienced from different vantage points, “Lumière” is a demanding work of art that will be hard to translate outside of its specific context.
