MONO, Nowhere, Now Here, 2019 ENG

MONO, Nowhere Now Here, 2019

By: Erreh Svaia

Rock N Roll Animal

With 20 years of career behind him, MONO, returns to the musical battlefield with a new album, enigmatically titled Nowhere, Now Here, along almost 10 albums the Japanese band has become a fundamental part of the musical movement known as post rock in which traditional musical structures seek an unusual evolution towards pure sound, without a doubt MONO perfectly reflects that introspective journey beyond the popular connotations to create a sound experience beyond the ordinary, and Nowhere, Now Here it's just that, an unusual journey, a different musical adventure, led by two extraordinary guitarists, Taka and Yoda, who seek to balance the distant worlds of Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca or Swans and the classic contemporary composition with exponents like Messiaen, Gorecki o Ligeti, without a doubt the work of the MONO is plagued by the extensive use of a dynamic that goes from the minimalist and almost ambient sounds, up to noise and something close to shoegaze, in a totally original, rebellious and unorthodox way.

God Bless, the first piece of the album could be an immediate reference to the sacred minimalism of the original Estonian composer, the legendary Arvo Part, the guitars of Taka and Yoda quickly take the initiative, going from the beautiful pure sound of a minimalist guitar, to the abrasive sound of the electric distortion that marks the entrance of the powerful drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla who makes his debut with the band on this album, the rhythm of the song is well delineated by the almost hypnotic and at the same time rabid guitars in a theme that defines the epic and majestic sound of the album, continued in an almost imperceptible way in the beautiful After You Comes the Flood (for which a short film was created in conjunction with the French film director Julien Levy) in order to create a pair of devastating dimensions, to later give way to Breath, which starts with robust synthesizers and the vocals of bassist Tamaki Kunishi, who premieres here as a vocalist with excellent results in an ethereal piece of singular beauty and arrangements possessing an overwhelmed emotion on the part of the rest of the band.

For the track that gives title to the album, it is Taka, the main composer of the band who takes the initiative with his guitar, followed in a titanic way by Cipolla, revealing an interesting disembodied dynamic that is captured in a spectacular way by the brilliant Steve Albini, who repeats again as a producer (although he will always define himself as only a "sound engineer") of the band, and probably the only producer capable of capturing the ruthless beauty of each of the Japanese musical pieces, capable of creating moments of overwhelming tension, which they release in a prodigious way through real storms of distortion, resonance and ghostly echoes, somehow, following the logic of Albini, I see his role in front of the band as a Chris Watson, who is dedicated to "capture sounds", in this way, I see Albini "capturing" astonished the storm that these Japanese unleashed on themselves, whose execution would seem like the complete ritual by some "samurai" warriors and their preparation for a fierce battle in the style of the legendary films of the immortal film director Akira Kurosawa.

Far and Further is another theme built through a beautiful guitar motif by Taka, sometimes reminds me of the beautiful sound exercises done by Robert Fripp in Brian Eno's Another Green World, and especially, the beginning of this theme it seems something extracted from that great album, although in the middle of it, the discreet and rising inclusion of Cipolla begins to take us in another direction, expanding more and more until reaching again a minimalist "heartbeat", in themes like Sorrow, band makes effective use of their ability to evoke emotions as few bands could do, while in Meet Us Where the Night Ends is a kind of tribute to the huge My Bloody Valentine, to end with the great Vanishing, Vanishing Maybe that closes a disc worthy of a legendary band that keeps on evolving its sound, that continues looking to become something unique and different, that continues taking risks and breaking its own paradigms, Nowhere, Now Here comes as one of the first big surprises of 2019.