As you may know from reading my blog previously, I used to run a ‘net.label’ – in fact, one of the first and more formative music labels releasing music for free online – called Monotonik (aka Mono/Mono211) from 1996 to 2009.
Mono started out as an Amiga demo-scene .MOD label releasing electronic music of many genres, but eventually narrowed down – in the form of Monotonik – to what might be called ‘idm’ – downtempo electronic music from a host of talented worldwide folks.
Although I intentionally let the Mono-related domains lapse a little while back, all of the label’s releases are still online, so this page will be the source for easily accessing all of them – plus the compilations that we’ve previously released.
[UPDATE: The entire Monotonik, Mono211, Mono catalog is up on the Netlabel Archive website, with links to MP3s and YouTube videos for every release. Zach Bridier, you’re the best! You can definitely use this as a primary starting point.]
Here’s the basic info:
Monotonik catalog at Archive.org – all .MP3 releases (plus some bootlegs/rarities) in easily streamable/downloadable form.
Mono/Mono211/Monotonik catalog at Scene.org – all of the early pre-MP3 .MOD releases, plus a bunch of the MP3 releases and even one or two weird DJ mixes!
Monotonik info (metadata) at Discogs.com – useful for checking out what other material our artists have put out.
And here’s some recommended compilations to get you into the label, all free to download and stream:
Various/Christopher Whaley – ’10 Years Of Monotonik: The Mix’ (An officially numbered Monotonik release put out in 2006, this is a really nicely done single mix of 20+ tracks from all of the first decade of Mono and Monotonik.)
Various Artists – “Monotonik Vol.1: The Early Years” (compiled in 2013, this picks up the best releases from 1999 and 2000 on Monotonik.)
Various Artists – “Monotonik.rx” (an unofficial ‘bootleg’ compilation from around 2002, includes some rare .MODs converted to .MP3, and a really well thought-out selection.)
Various Artists – “Monotonik.x2” (ditto, a Monotonik.rx follow-up with another great mix of uncommon .MODs and awesome early .MP3s from the first 50-80 releases or so.)
Various Artists – “Monotonik.x3” (the last of these, and also excellent.)
Monotonik releases 1-50, releases 51-90, releases 91-120, releases 121-138 and Mono211 releases 1-30 are also available for easy streaming/grabbing (albeit with non-fixed-up ID3 tags) in single Archive.org directories.
I’m tremendously proud of my time curating the amazing artists who made up Mono, Mono211, Monotonik and more (let’s not forget the ‘sekrit’ sublabels!) If you have questions or reminiscences about the label, hit me up.