Monotonous Landscapes by Volker Lankow

When I was working on the music for this album, I had to think of many trips that took me to different monotonous landscapes. Be it long car rides in Sudan, Afghanistan and other countries. The monotony of my thoughts and mind which adapted to these landscapes has remained in my memory.I remember driving on endless roads less travelled through monotonous landscapes that changed only gradually and slowly.

"Monotony is more a state of mind, more a state of discomfort than a state of place. To call an empty, dry desert, dotted with shrubs and stretching to the horizon, 'monotonous' is an emotional and even poetic response to a landscape that is not monotonous in itself, but has become so through thought." (Paul Miller)

Such an experience became most apparent to me when I set out over 22 years ago to cross the Chalbi Desert in Northern Kenya on an 85 km hike from North Horr, a godforsaken place in the desert, to Lake Turkana. On this hike under the blazing sun through an inhospitable salt desert, I felt the monotony of a landscape that was actually not so monotonous.... A walk for the sake of walking... My thoughts became monotonous, and so did the landscape around me.

There have been many journeys in my life through various monotonous landscapes that are at the same time indescribably beautiful. also on these journeys I felt: in the monotonous experience the mind is forced to adapt to the landscape.

Ambient and drone music accompanies my memories of moving through monotonous landscapes in so many places around the world.
Maybe I can get some of you to close your eyes and enjoy this wonderful monotony beyond the horizon. My music should serve as a means of transportation for this.

There is a longer bonus track in which you can recognize some typical sounds of my ambient music now and then.

Volker Lankow is a musician who lives in Berlin, who started in late 70s as percussionist,
over the years Volker dedicated his work entirely to Ambient and Drone Music, using mainly electronics and loops and ocasionally percussions, to develop his own vison of experimental sounds and drones.

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