The work behind “Waiting for You” by Monotronic spanned two years and several geographic mindsets. Its songs were built in the contained spaces of an East Village apartment and the open humidity of Tulum, initially seeming like disparate projects with no clear direction. Only in retrospect did their shared disposition come into focus. This is an album about the slow work of self-knowledge, which here looks less like an epiphany and more like the gradual acceptance of a particular signal, the constant, low hum of being alone in an uncertain world. The characters in these tracks speak with a patina, their shoulders adorned with chevrons earned through unglamorous introspection and the occasional dirt-covered face from stumbling over a few rocks along the way.
Monotronic operates as the musical outlet for Ramsey Elkholy, an anthropologist by training and obliquely by profession, because musicians, too, study what it means to be a human. His songwriting treats sound and experience as cultural artefacts to be collected and reassembled; if that sounds like archaeology, it’s no coincidence. The resulting music is functional and fused, drawing from the directness of indie rock and incorporating a range of palatable and catchy electro-pop flourishes, all seasoned with a healthy, worldly perspective and texture that Elkholy picked up in places like Sumatra and India. It is the sound of global exposure digested into a dialect you know by heart.
The album is a healthy 11-song-long rummage through Elkholy’s inner library, where we come upon wildly different sounds, from the post-punk-infused “Everything Moves” to the Asian influences of “Kettle Song (Yama Yama).” Ramsey even goes so far as to show off his impeccable cover of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears… yeah, this album’s got it all.
ScreenshotThe project, which began in New York and is now based in Los Angeles, has accumulated its audience through a series of steady, tangible steps. A sold-out North American tour, singles that connected, and music videos that premiered successfully; these are the data points of a gradual build. The album’s release is the logical outcome of that process, a consolidation of materials that finally contextualise each other. To listen is to hear two years of mapping converge into a single, coherent landscape. The title “Waiting for You” ultimately speaks to this patient’s act of assembly and to the quiet understanding that often, the only thing waiting yields is a better set of questions.
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