In spirit of record store day, I bought Mono's album I posted on here a long time ago, You Are There. Then I was listening to their other records and realized it's been a while since I posted some Mono and also realized somewhat recently how much i love this album. The flow is perfect and just about everything about it is beautiful. It's quite the sonic journey.
I realized that as long as I've had the Mono albums I posted below, I never truly appreciated them until I saw this DVD. It's more of a documentary with giant segments of songs mixed with sparse interludes of tour footage and interviews. The live footage is really where it grabs your attention though. The songs build up in such a visceral way because of the live atmosphere and you can tell how loud and heavy their music is supposed to be. The mood of the live performances is very intimate, despite the pretty immense crowd. This is because It was all filmed on stage by director/filmographer/editor Teppei Kishida. He essentially followed them around the world and walked around the stage during their performances to film them. This personal touch to the film makes it seem so much more intense as opposed to the usual camera angles you would see in live DVDs. I also believe that he is a big fan of the music and knows exactly when the surprisingly intense climaxes are and always pans to the audience to capture their reaction; usually one of incredible shock followed by elation. It's a beautiful thing. PLEASE check this out, especially if you weren't really digging those two albums below.
WARNING: THIS MUSIC IS NOT FOR THE IMPATIENT IF THAT DESCRIBES YOU, PLEASE GO HERE
At the moment, all I really feel like listening to is this band. Their insanely dense and vast song structures perfectly compliment the cold and blustery turn the weather has taken. Every sprawling song seems to tell a story in the fashion of some kind of wise elder. They start out very calming and barely grab your attention but once it gets to the real gist, you're sucked in and you feel compelled to find out what happens next. Then it hits you. Usually it's a blast of immense, eardrum shattering guitar squeals and cymbal crashes that signify the crescendo but its not always so obvious. Sometimes the buildup lasts most of the song, leaving you breathless and brain dead when the piece reaches the climax. I'm posting two albums, their earliest LP and their latest, because their style has grown and matured so much but still retained the enthusiasm and obscurity of their infancy. The first album is a lot heavier and dare I say, straightforward, while their latest effort is a more fantastical tale involving more intricate and elaborate orchestration (think Godspeed You! Black Emperoresque type stuff: strings, timpani, etc) that just makes it even more epic than before. I hope you will take the time to listen to these mountainous pieces of music and really immerse yourself in the experience.
Here's the song "The Kidnapper Bell" off their first album:
