MONO Fixation

RAID WORLD FESTIVAL 2009: MONO @ Liquid Room, Ebisu, Tokyo, Japan 2009/05/16





MONO was set up with bassist Tamaki in center stage, immediately behind her was the drummer Yoda, and guitarists Taka and Yasunori to each side; both seated. They began around 21:15 to a sold out venue at Ebisu’s LIQUIDROOM. When they came on stage the crowd got dead silent as MONO opened on a nearly pitch dark stage with “Ashes in the Snow,” from their new album Hymn to the Immortal Wind.

They painted a bittersweet atmosphere as dim violet stage lights penetrated through the openings in the silhouettes of the band members. Slow peaceful melodies transitioned into a heavily distorted guitar soundscape with percussion crashing, becoming exponentially louder and more aggressive. However, each accompanying sound could be clearly defined through the thick wall of noise. MONO would move with more emotion as the tempo and volume increased toward the climax of the song. As the song wound down they transitioned into the next song.



The next song was “Burial at Sea,” from their new album Hymn to the Immortal Wind. As the song began, the guitarists kneeled down and started tweaking knobs on their pedals and effectors, adding greater delay and reverb effects. Like most of MONO’s songs, or at least from their new album, they followed a similar formula of a slow melancholic pace, gradually building up to a violent eruption of distortion and drum breaks. At some points it sounded like there was a back-up track playing a piano melody, but in reality it was a guitar being gently plucked while highly compressed. “Burial at Sea” reached a noise climax than slowed down into near silence, where only a ground loop could be heard.



With some more knob twiddling and pedal-work, they moved into “Pure as Snow,” from new album. MONO played this track with much soul and emotion, all the while remaining precise creating an intense dynamic. The structures of their songs are fundamentally simplistic, yet executed with great calculation. The song moved along until its inevitable discharge into a grinding and warping drone-out session. Converging into a wall of dissonance, each part could be heard intricately, with no one segment washing out the others. Then it cut off into dead silence.





MONO went on to play “Yearning” from a previous album. All the songs up to this point were from their new album Hymn to the Immortal Wind. The guitars droned in harmonic unison setting up for the first of two blaring segments of sonic turbulence. As the first one arrived and cascaded, they returned to a steady and somber groove, and all of a sudden a startling second peak arrived as the audiences’ heads nodded in unison with the thick atmosphere. At this point one of the guitarists lays his guitar down on the ground, kneels down and starts layering on the delay, creating warping effect that could be felt in the bottom of one’s gut; rising and falling like crashing waves.

After “Yearning” the lights dimmed and the band paused as bassist Tamaki moved over to the piano. After a few moments of complete silence, only interrupted once by the shouts of “Rock n’ Roll!” by one of the audience’s many foreign attendees, a soft melody started to float from the electric piano. Soft notes progressed into a more pronounced lead as the guitars accompanied into the last song of their set, “Everlasting.” The two guitars harmonized to create a padding effect as the bassist moved back to her bass. The tension became heavy as they transitioned into a clash of wailing distorted guitars, and a thick bass rhythm being smacked fiercely by Tamaki while her back to the crowd; total shoegazer moment. The final medley was a massive drone with an excellent beat.







Upon finishing “Everlasting”, MONO left the stage to shouts of “encore”, but unfortunately they never came back for an encore. This shows their treatment of their live performances as exactly that, a performance. While most bands try to look cool while sacrificing the quality of the acoustics, MONO’s guitarists planted themselves in their seats to make sure every note they played counted. With only five songs, the set lasted over an hour and the journey was unforgettable.