Delayed x Mostra: Robert Henke presents Dust
With the summer festival season drifting into memory, it feels like the right moment to linger on one of the most thoughtfully shaped events in recent years. The Mostra Festival unfolded over the Easter weekend across two Barcelona locations, and what set it apart wasn’t just the programming, but the curation - a balance of trust, patience, and precision. The first two days leaned toward the ambient and the experimental, tipping into rhythm as the nights wore on. Yet the real magic of that opening stretch lay in the beatless hours. Friday in particular offered a moment that still reverberates among Mostra regulars and beyond: Robert Henke’s performance of Dust. If there is any place in the world designed for such a work, Mostra provided the perfect frame. For one afternoon, Henke held the crowd in complete attention and reverence, something essential for any artist, but especially for one whose work is as delicate, shifting, and expansive as Dust.
For many of us, Robert Henke, Monolake to longtime listeners, has been a constant presence in the background of our musical lives. His records shaped taste, his performances redefined how electronic music could be experienced live, and his role as co-creator of Ableton changed the very tools we use to make and share sound. Few artists can claim such a dual legacy: architect of both the music and the machinery. Whether in moments of joy or frustration, whether in the studio or on the dancefloor, it’s impossible to imagine modern electronic music without his fingerprints on it. Henke embodies the link between technological innovation and artistic expression, and his influence runs deeper than most of us can trace.
Dust is perhaps the clearest expression of that link. Powered by a custom granular synthesis engine, it reduces sound to particles, field recordings, analog tones, machine hiss, bells, and waves, then disperses them into clouds that evolve in real time. The result is less like a composition and more like a living organism: fragile, unpredictable, always becoming something new. At Mostra, this unfolding took shape in late afternoon, after Patrick Russell’s set had sharpened the air with its own restraint. Henke stepped in with a 360-degree surround system that transformed the floor of Fabra i Coats into a resonant body. The sound was cosmic and liquid, grainy and immense, stretching outward until it seemed to erase the horizon. Every surface in the space shimmered with detail, as if the air itself had been tuned. What made it remarkable was how fragile it all felt. Nothing was forced; every movement seemed to arise on its own, like dust caught in late-afternoon sunlight. Yet the immersion was total. People surrendered, leaning into the space as if trying to hold onto something that could never be held. For that hour, Mostra wasn’t a festival anymore. It was a room of people floating together in a world made entirely of sound, knowing it would never happen in quite the same way again.