Join Monolink on Sound Advice, the weekly interview series covering artists’ journeys and their creative process. In this episode, we discuss Monolink’s latest album ‘The Beauty Of It All’ and how he balances live folk playing with electronic DJing and production.
Welcome to Sound Advice, the series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers and creatives are leaning into everything SoundCloud offers to elevate their sound, get heard and catapult their careers. Sound Advice is now available in audio format on the SoundCloud Stories profile.
On this episode of Sound Advice, we speak to German producer, DJ and singer-songwriter Steffen Lincke, better known as Monolink. Growing up in Hamburg, Germany, Steffan played in indie rock and folk bands. But when he moved to Berlin at 20 years old, he became enamoured with DJing and electronic music culture. These days, he writes songs that fuse the two worlds together. In the vein of artists like Nicolás Jaar and Pink Floyd, he makes storytelling tracks that are equally at home on headphones, on concert stages and blasting through the speakers at Burning Man.
In this interview, Monolink talks about his creative process and the making of his most recent album, ‘The Beauty Of It All.’ We talk about the transformative power of collaboration, how he balances the acoustic and digital realms, and how live performance and DJing have shaped his artistic evolution. He shares how he curates his SoundCloud profile, and uses the platform to collect demos and organise ideas. And we learn what’s stoking his creativity now and keeping him inspired.
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO EPISODE OF SOUND ADVICE FEATURING MONOLINK
LISTEN TO ‘THE BEAUTY OF IT ALL’ BY MONOLINK ON SOUNDCLOUD.
Things We Talked About In This Episode of Sound Advice
Monolink’s Acoustic-Electronic Balancing Act on His Latest Album, ‘The Beauty Of It All’
- We speak to Monolink from Toronto, as he’s wrapping up the North American leg of his latest tour, in support of his 2025 album ‘The Beauty Of It All.’ To begin our conversation, we talk about his tour highlights and how, at this stage of his career, he likes to frame his live tours to tie closely to the intentions of his albums.
- As an artist who straddles the live rock and electronic music worlds, Monolink shares how he is always thinking about this careful balancing act, and how he can best present that to his fans. His live show, he says, gives him “the freedom to play all of the music I want” without having to “stick to a tempo to keep a party going;” blending ballads with dancefloor songs.
- This fusion of sounds comes from a pivotal time in Monolink’s young life. Here, he talks about how he started out playing in indie rock bands in his home city of Hamburg, before moving to Berlin and discovering electronic music culture. Fascinated by the sound, he threw himself into digital music production.
- When it comes to his inspirations, Monolink loves rock and folk singer-songwriters like Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Here, he talks about how, especially on ‘The Beauty Of It All,’ he taps into their influential energies through his lyricism, and his piano- and guitar-playing. “Electronic music is an amazing sound and body experience, which uses sound to tell stories” he says, but he taps into the work of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and others to bring a deeper layer to his music.
Making ‘The Beauty Of It All’ With Live Instrumentation in a Farmland Studio
- To make ‘The Beauty Of It All,’ Monolink left the hustle and bustle of Berlin for a farm-studio in the German countryside, run by a longtime friend and musical collaborator. After years of touring and DJing, he felt the need to get back into a formal studio setting, and to use his hands to transform his ideas into songs. Here, he talks about how being surrounded by nature and a variety of live instruments gave him the space, peace and tactility needed to create the new material, and how morning jam sessions led to fresh ideas.
- Many artists today will relate to the strange exhaustion of spending a long time on the road, touring their music. Here, Monolink opens up about the worries and frustrations that come with that experience, how it can affect his music-making and how he works around that to get the best results he can.
- In this fusion of writing on guitar and piano, and producing on computer, Monolink operates on the premise of turning “folk songs into dancefloor songs.” He goes into more detail about how this works on ‘The Beauty Of It All’ in terms of songwriting and production techniques, how he likes to use piano and guitar to “create a feedback loop between hands and ears,” and how “singing along with it, even nonsense,” allows him to therapeutically work through his harmonic ideas.
How Monolink Uses SoundCloud to Prepare Albums and Discover New Music
- In the flow of album preparation, Monolink uses SoundCloud to keep track of his ideas. He shares private playlists of tracks that he’s working on with his peers and collaborators, and uses private playlists to sit with potential album tracklisting; helping him stitch together the album’s flow, picking his favorite tracks in the process.
- He also talks about how he likes to create a balance on his SoundCloud profile between his studio releases, DJ sets and live performance recordings — to show the listener the breadth of his output — and how he likes to dig through the liked tracks of users he follows to discover new music. “SoundCloud is where young and new producers put up their music, and there’s a lot that you can really discover,” he says. “You can discover music in a really raw form, and that’s something I find exciting.”
The Monolink Festival Experience, and What’s Next In 2026
- As a performer, some of Monolink’s most memorable sets are festivals. Here, he talks about the difference between rock and electronic festivals, how the latter opened his eyes to dance music culture and the communal power of electronic music, and how he felt his music would be better suited to those crowds.
- From those festival experiences, he’s come into 2026 with a fresh take on his live performance and DJ style. Recently, he explains, he’s been experimenting with singing live during his DJ sets, as a way to bridge his acoustic and electronic sides. With this format, he says, he doesn’t have to oscillate between his heartfelt songs and his dancefloor tracks as much, and the crowds have been enjoying it, too.
- He teases that he may continue down this path in the future, too — so for Monolink fans, you can look forward to that potentially happening during festival season this spring and summer. You can check out Monolink’s upcoming tour dates here.
Links and Extras
Follow Monolink’s journey on SoundCloud.
Press play on Monolink’s 2025 album, ‘The Beauty Of It All.’
Hit play on the ARTBAT remix of Monolink’s track “Return to Oz.”
Listen to “Burning Sun,” a pivotal track for his 2022 set at Burning Man.
Go back to where it all began with one of Monolink’s earliest SoundCloud uploads, 2017’s “Sirens.”
Listen to Monolink’s 2019 album, ‘Amniotic.’
Explore some of Monolink’s wide-ranging influences, including Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen and Nicolás Jaar.
Listen to the New Era Indie playlist on SoundCloud.
Never miss an episode and follow the official Sound Advice playlist on SoundCloud.
Getting The Most Out of SoundCloud
Learn more about using DMs to connect with fellow artists and potential collaborators.
Learn more about how to make a custom playlist on SoundCloud.
Learn more about unlimited uploads, available with an Artist Pro subscription.
Learn more unlocking access to unlimited distribution, available with Artist Pro.
Learn more about getting heard with SoundCloud’s updated algorithm, available to Artist and Artist Pro subscribers.
To discover additional features a SoundCloud Artist or Artist Pro subscription offers, visit here. To catch up on past installments of Sound Advice and make sure you don’t miss out on future episodes, visit here.
CREDITS Host: Vivian Host, Executive Producer: Mike Spinella, Producer: KC Orcutt, Audio Engineer: David “DibS” Shackney, Coordinator: Trevor McGee, Editorial Associate: Lauren Martin
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