MONO
Japan’s MONO draw forth universal rapture with latest album Hymn to the Immortal Wind.
Just in time for their 10-year anniversary, MONO return with their fifth studio album, the absolutely massive Hymn To The Immortal Wind. After touring almost non-stop for five years, the band hibernated for over a year to focus solely on writing Hymn. The result is their most thoughtful and eclectic album to date. Written and arranged with a hopeful, romantic narrative in mind, the songs string together like chapters in an epic love story. The music is naturally majestic, with MONO’s trademark wall of noise crashing beautifully against the largest chamber orchestra the band has ever enlisted. The instrumentation is vast, incorporating strings, flutes, organ, piano, glockenspiel and tympani into their standard face-melting set-up. Recorded to analog tape with long-time friend and producer Steve Albini, there is an intimacy captured here that is at once beautiful and a little terrifying. The creaking of old wooden chairs as the orchestra rocks in their seats (both literally and figuratively), puckered lips rolling along flutes, and even the conductor’s opening cue can be heard during the hauntingly quiet opening moments While Hymn continues to mine the cinematic drama inherent in all of MONO’s music, the dynamic shifts now come more from dark-to-light instead of quiet-to-loud. The maturity to balance these elements so masterfully has become MONO’s strongest virtue – - save for perhaps their uncanny ability to sound every bit like a plane crashing into a Beethoven concert.
Mono are Takaakira “Taka” Goto (guitar), Tamaki (bass), Yoda (guitar) and Yasunori Takada (drums).
Touring Australia late 2009.
FOLLOW THE MAP video is available here and going out soon to video world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bAUK-aoqt8
Amazon has chosen ‘Hymn To The Immortal Wind’ as one of their Top 4 Albums of the Year so far.
Also it debuted at #40 on the Billboard Top Independent Record Charts first week in US.
Screw ‘Music For The People’, this is music for the gods. Japan’s Mono have been tugging the heartstrings of the faithful for almost 10 years with their, y’know, grand post-rock symphonies, and their fifth album is as ambitious as ever, teeming as it is with crashing guitars and cinematic strings. ‘Pure As Snow (Trails Of The Winter Storm)’ soars above a maelstrom of melody and noise, the 13-minute ‘The Battle To Heaven’ conjures angels and demons clashing with flaming swords and ‘Everlasting Light’ burns and builds and dies with staggering grace. Pretentious, yes, but defiantly so. ‘Hymn…’ feels like the imaginary soundtrack to the film inside your head and is an outstanding work of epic beauty. Ben Patashnik – NME 8/10
http://www.mono-jpn.com
MONO’s Hymm to the immortal Wind out on Valve through MGM NOW…
Features something so sublime that this bramble of words can’t possibly convey.
Trust me.
