Customer Reviews

Walking Cloud & Deep Red Sky Flag Fluttered & Sun

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have to admit that I was a little skeptical when I first heard the tracks from this group...and then I saw them live a couple of nights ago - THEY BLEW MY MIND. Sometimes it takes a live performance to really appreciate the direction the band is going. Needless to say, I am no longer skeptical; I truly appreciate the artistry that is Mono.

Obviously, there are 2 bands called Mono. This one is the one that creates brilliant pieces of music that could be best described as among the post-rock movement. You can hear a lot of Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai in these recordings, but Mono has imprinted it's own signature self into the music so that it explores other realms of music rather than dwell in the genre of its influences. The cello is a great aid to adding a serene flow to the already smooth, beautiful pieces of music.

So listen to "16.12", "Halcyon (Beautiful Days)", and "Lost Snow" and you won't be dissapointed. Serene, lush, instrumental rock that needs to be heard to be understood.

This is probably the most beautiful post-rock I have heard. If you are into bands such as Sigur Ros, Explosions in the sky, godspeed, you need to check out this cd. Stunning, aggressive, and beautiful.

If you require your records to contain vocals, songs, repeated and catchy melodies, or verse-chorus-verse structure, then skip this. If you prefer "music" to "sound," then skip this.

On the other hand, if you can appreciate John Cage's 4'33" of silence (not actually silence because the audience and ambience provide the sound), and you enjoy the audible textures pioneered by Sonic Youth, taken to extremes by the aforementioned Godspeed, Mogwai, etc, then you will probably love this record.

The album opens up with the sounds of a beach, wind, water, and plaintive violins coming in softly like an ethereal funeral. You may be tempted to turn up the volume, but I warn you not to. Eventually simple guitar parts grow louder and more complex before a burst of distortion carries the momentum forward. Over the course of the album, you will experience silence, deafening roars, beautiful noise, simple melodies, and genuine emotion. In other words, a total sonic experience.

For fans of adventurous music only: they make Mogwai seem like a pop rock band. For fans of silence in equal part to noise. For fans of sound, not music.

hello all.

i feel that 'walking cloud' is a very beautiful record, and deserves to be heard by many in its entirety. the sound-bites on amazon do not really do this record justice. a few seconds of 'halcyon' cannot truly tell the beauty of that song.

concerning what some other people have mentioned regarding this album, and some other records whose sound is akin to Mono's (explosions, godspeed, mogway, etc.), i have to say that to speak of the 'soft-loud-soft'ness of these records seems very superficial to me. yes, all these albums have their peaks & valleys if you will, but these seem to me to be intrinsic in the 'story-telling' of each record. to me it is very much like a baring of the soul, revealing all the good-bad, light-dark, the beautiful and the ugly.

in his 'decline of the west', oswald spengler wrote regarding classical music that the people of this time turned to instrumental music so that 'they might better express their relationship with God'. it seems that this is happening all over again with musicians who fall under the dubious umbrella of 'post-rock'. all seem to be trying to better express their relationship, perhaps not with god, but with themselves, no? personally, it does seem to me that their is something akin to religious ecstacy in some of these recordings, but this would be better left undiscussed, as i do not know any of these musicians personally.

this all being said, 'walking cloud' is a rather beautiful record, and i look forward to more releases from these very talented & beautiful people.

listen to it straight through, all at once. remember what a music experience used to be. let them take you somewhere new. let it build. there is magic here. if you have an adventurous spirit or seek something new, soulful and slightly dangerous, then please give this a try. there is yet hope for guitar bands. but think of the creative explorations of 'godspeed you black emperor' rather than the lame redundancy of 'lynyrd skynyrd'.

Mono continued to build their reputations as one of post-rocks most solid contenders with what was probably their tightest recording to date (2004), the Albini-produced Walking Cloud...I could argue individual tracks packed greater punch upon initial hearing with earlier work, but here was an excellent summation of everything the band had achieved thus far- intricate guitar work, bone-crunching, reverb-laden payoffs, and a commitment to melodic enormity which makes them one of only a few bands who have been able to emulate some of that Godspeed aesthetic without sounding derivative.

An overflow of spirited inspiration, Mono's third album is musically more lavishly cinematic and orchestrated than previous material, while expressively the band's storm of emotional force has evolved into a more reflective and tender disposition, resulting in an album that is more moderate in its use of the by now well-established post-rock surges of sonic devastation emerging from patient rises in tone and anticipation. They still feature the stylistic trademark ascending crescendos, but this time around the monolithically amplified harmonic charges and shattering guitar rushes are more sparingly employed as the band construct their affectionately sad floating melodies within slow-motion atmospheric soundscapes of fragile contemplation.

Lengthy tracks like album opener "16.12", the evocative "Lost Snow" and the gorgeously arranged and inspirationally touching "Halcyon (Beautiful Days)" rise gracefully from gentle passages of soft elegance carrying distant echoes of forgotten hopes, carefully and slowly building to overpowering explosions of deafening, cascading sound of a most beautiful yearning, falling just as gently and patiently as its ascension.
The stunning intensity of sound merging from the distorted and effect-laden guitars is enhanced by slow-motion layering and remarkable patience in elemental application, and when the band erupts into cathartic waves of sheer articulated noise, as in the striving chaotic outbursts of "Lost Snow", complete with the emphatic pounding of the drums and crashing cymbals, the effect is often mesmerizing and sublimely humbling, yet always strangely embracing, with such a frailty and tenderness, like a benevolent storm set in motion by the universal process of chaos and harmony; just because it crushes you doesn't mean it doesn't love you.

But all we have are our ideas and experiences, and in the end what they reveal is not very much, like the intangible, somewhat fragmentary, ethereal nature of the shorter, single-themed tracks "2 Candles, 1 Wish" and "The Sky Remained Forever", which offer a glimpse of an eternal truth intuitively acknowledged yet never to be fully comprehended. Their slightly more expansive cousins "Mere Your Pathetique Light" and "A Thousand Paper Cranes" grant us a more elaborate if not comprehensive representation, built from simple clean guitar and piano melodies and kindly threatening to transcend their own glory, yet too aware of their own comforting caress to disturb a moment of pleasant reflection with a raging passion.

The familiar tactic of stress and deliverance is utilized effectively, in both timing and execution, building in suspenseful anticipation to near-breaking point and delivering a moment's relief in the shape of erupting guitars and soaring, radiant melodies. The comedown is never a letdown because the duration of the ascending moment is well-considered in the vast context of these compositions; like the world itself, the music changes scenes according to an order of balance, which is necessary for harmony and structure.

The meticulous arrangement and detailed exactness of the instrumentation, which includes a string section to flesh out the music's structural orchestration and enhance the delicate beauty of the expression, coupled with the artistic perception and creative desire involved here, supplies a striking clarity to the music's design and progression. This clarity is also a result of Steve Albini's perceptive and organically powerful production, which provides clear individual definition of instrumentation and enhances the band's massive foundation of sound, for an album that sounds as lucid as it is forceful.

The compositional approach and expressive ideas will not awe one with innovation within the style, because these formulations have been heard many times, but Mono's application of these themes is brilliant when given sufficient time and consideration for proper manifestation, and when they fall short of their own standard, resulting in inconsistency in cohesion and incompleteness in the form of excessive repetition and underdeveloped ideas, they make up for it with sheer beauty of isolated sound and deeply felt expressive desire. What we're looking for is an experience to cherish, even if this experience must come from a freedom within captivity; this album offers such an experience, an immersive event of vast possibility and wonder rich with the emotional awareness to revel in an uplifting moment with as much purpose and conviction as a reflection on gentle sadness.

No - this is NOT that washed up band with the CD Formica Blues. This is for people who like serious music. yes its instrumental and anyone into "post-rock" like Mogwai or Godspeed will dig this. I like to listen to this with my headphones as I walk down the streets of Chicago. It almost serves as a soundtrack to my life in real time.

I'm writing this review quickly but wanted people to know there are better things being done in an independent scene than being forced to listen to Britney again on the radio....

With each new album, it's becoming a bit harder to know what to make of Mono. The first time I heard them, I couldn't help but be impressed - their influences (Mogwai, Godspeed, Moricone) may have been easy to spot, but the skill with which they welded them together was, by all accounts, pretty awe-inspiring. Thing is, there's only so far you can go with the whole soft-loud-soft post-rock thang - and "Walking Cloud..." finds Mono squirming in a straightjacket of their own making. All the elements from their first two albums - gorgeous washes of FX-drenched guitar, meditative lulls giving way to explosions of noise, etc. etc. - are intact (and, truth be told, sounding better than ever), but what's crucially lacking is, well, something fresh to chew on. As churlish at it feels to say it, when confronted with music as monumental and impeccably-executed as this, I'll say it anyway: ho-hum, more of the same.