Mono (band)
| Mono | |
|---|---|
 Mono live in Stockholm 2005 |
|
| General information | |
| origin | Tokyo , Japan |
| Genre (s) | Post rock |
| founding | 2000 |
| Website | monoofjapan.com |
| Current occupation | |
| Takaakira Goto | |
| Tamaki Kunishi | |
| Dahm Majuri Cipolla (since 2018) | |
Electric guitar |
Yoda |
| former members | |
| Yasunori Takada (2000 to 2017) | |
Mono is a Japanese post-rock band that was formed in Tokyo in 2000 .
history
Guitarist Takaakira Goto began to write songs in 1999, for whose implementation he was looking for fellow musicians, whom he found in Tamaki, Yoda and Yasunori Takada. Yoda was friends with Goto before, but he didn't know that Yoda was playing guitar. After a debut EP on the small Japanese label Forty-4, Mono released their debut album Under the Pipal Tree in 2001 in the New Japan series on John Zorn 's Tzadik Records label. One Step More and You Die was released in 2003 and the remix album New York Soundtracks the following year .
The two studio albums, Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined and You Are There , were recorded with Steve Albini , with whom the band would like to continue working. You Are There has been received the most positively by the critics so far and achieved a Metascore of 81. In 2007, Gone was a collection of tracks from older, partly out of print EPs and split singles. Over the years, Mono has been able to steadily increase both the sales of its phonograms and the number of visitors to its concerts.
In December 2017 the band announced that with drummer Yasunori Takada a member would leave the band for the first time. At the beginning of 2019, Nowhere Now Here, again produced by Steve Albini, was released via Pelagic Records, the first album with Dahm Majuri Cipolla, the new drummer. Bassist Tamaki Kunishi contributed a vocal part to the piece Breathe for the first time in the history of the music group.
style
Mono's music is, with a few exceptions, almost exclusively instrumental. In the beginning the band was very much influenced by Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine , but also got together with Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor linked. As typical representatives of post-rock, mono work with loud-quiet dynamics by transforming slowly building up guitar figures into distorted passages, but also always leaving space for instruments such as cello or piano.
Critics accuse the band of picking up patterns and clichés and therefore hardly being able to stand out from other bands in the genre. The unique selling point is Monos reference to the Japanese culture, which z. B. expressed in the inclusion of Japanese myths and legends. Several pieces on Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined were inspired by the fate of Sadako Sasaki , who, based on an ancient Japanese legend, believed that by folding a thousand paper cranes she could have a wish come true from the gods.
Discography
Albums
- Under the Pipal Tree (2001)
- One Step More and You Die (2003)
- Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined (2004)
- You Are There (2006)
- Hymn to the Immortal Wind (2009)
- For My Parents (2012)
- The Last Dawn (2014)
- Rays of Darkness (2014)
- Requiem For Hell (2016)
- Nowhere Now Here (2019)
Singles and EPs
- Hey You (2000)
- Memorie dal Futuro (2006)
- The Phoenix Tree (2007)
- Mono & The Ocean - Transcendental Split EP (2015)
DVDs
- Holy Ground: NYC Live With The Wordless Music Orchestra (as DVD + CD or DVD + 3LP) (2010)
Others
- New York Soundtracks (remixes of One Step More and You Die ) (2004)
- Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain (with World's End Girlfriend ) (2006)
- Gone: A Collection of EPs 2000-2007 (2007)
Web links
- Official website
- Mono at laut.de
- Mono at Discogs (English)
- archive.org: Complete live concerts of the band for free download
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c An interview with 'Taka' Goto of MONO on terrascope.co.uk (English)
- ↑ Mono: Under the Pipal Tree at tzadik.com (English)
- ↑ Mono find fan in Steve Albini on japantimes.co.jp (English)
- ↑ Mono: You Are There (2006): Reviews on Metacritic (English)
- ↑ BANDS: MONO ( Memento of the original from September 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on temporaryresidence.com (English)
- ↑ https://www.metal-hammer.de/reviews/mono-nowhere-now-here/
- ↑ Review of Under the Pipal Tree ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on guypetersreviews.com (English)
- ↑ Review of Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined on Plattentests.de
- ↑ Review of One more step before you die on laut.de
