Monolink – Live at Gaathafushi Island, Maldives, for Cercle & W Hotels, 2021

On 26 July 2021, Cercle and W Hotels staged Monolink on Gaathafushi, the private castaway island of W Maldives, for a live set filmed in the middle of a turquoise lagoon. Steffen Linck, better known as Monolink, delivers his signature melodic live electronica: a deep voice, an acoustic guitar and hands moving across synthesizers and drum machines at once, halfway between folk songwriting and the trance of the Berlin scene. This is no ordinary DJ set, the musician genuinely plays and sings live, layering his own tracks (Laura, The Prey, Father Ocean, Sirens) alongside his remix of Zigan Aldi’s Fidale. True to the Cercle concept of filming an artist in an iconic location, the white-sand setting and translucent water are part of the performance itself, captured as the sun drops over the Indian Ocean. Running roughly 75 minutes, streamed live before landing on Cercle’s channel, this concert distills the Monolink world: organic build-ups, deep pads and an emotion that owes as much to the song as to the dancefloor. An ideal way into Cercle’s catalogue of nature-bound live sets.