Twenty two years. Eleven studio albums. These Japanese loons have had a long and hopefully lucrative career. I have dipped in and out of their eclectic sounds over the years – usually as part of playlists made by mates who were entertaining the hungover remnants at Desertfest hotels and air bnbs. My memory of the band’s music is hazy at best – which to be fair is probably just fine by them.

Now to make up for my dazed and confused intro I better introduce the band with some respect.

Coming together with a love for avant-garde pioneers My Bloody Valentine and Mogwai and a great passion for Beethoven and Enio Morricone the quartet have built a reputation for dreamy instrumental soundscapes. Mono is made up of Taka and Yoda on guitar, Tamaki on bass and piano and Dahm on drums. For Pilgrimage of the Soul the band have once again collaborated with legendary producer and musician Steve Albini.

Together they have produced eight tracks that get to the very core of human emotion. Music is supposed to move us first and foremost, whether that movement is towards joy, sadness or even rage.  Mono create the kind of sonic narcotic that lifts the listener out of the mundanity of the here and now into the otherworldly there and when.

The album, like most instrumental collections, really needs to be taken as a whole, like a classical movement. The modern slicing of music into chunks does not work here as Mono want to take the listener on a journey and there is no point only seeing part of the lustrous path they lay.

There are moments on the journey that I can feel myself welling up. “Heaven is a Wild Flower” is achingly beautiful and tender, blending delicate piano with electronic strings to gorgeous effect.

It’s not all pastels and light brush strokes however. The opener “Riptide” has a mean and angry riff running through it and a martial drum beat that lingers as a tremolo post rock guitar breaks through.  Whilst “Imperfect Things” has a dayglo on concrete, post punk air about it and a beat you can boogie to.

The Morricone influence rides in on a pale horse via “To See a World” and the pictures painted move round the compass from the East to old West with healthy dollop of shoegaze . Is cowboygaze a thing yet?

“Innocence” is big sounding in an 80’s John Hughes flick kinda way. It feels like Judd Nelson would be walking across a football field to it whilst dreaming about Milly Ringwald (Yeah I know that is Simple minds) . It is filled with drum rolls and swathes of guitars overlaid with strings and makes me want to wear an oversized tweed long coat. Then the heart-breaking layers of guitars drop with a gorgeous candy floss post/gaze/black insert microgenre feel that pops like exploding sweets on my ear tastebuds.

“The Auguries” is a warm slice of melancholic post rock that rolls like a timelapse picture of hill fog. Tremolo guitars emerge from the moisture lead the listener into “Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand”, which opens with eerily pitch shifted Hammond organ. A xylophone plays over the top giving a child-like innocence whilst the organ shifts further to resemble an owl. A loose-limbed guitar floats down like a soft summer rain. Shit! This album is turning me into a Romantic poet. (or my teenage self – the horror!) The languid feel lasts for half of the tracks 12 minutes before building into its bombastic older sibling, and giving it a bit of the Deafheavens.

Final track “And eternity in an hour” is another tearjerker. I am an absolute sucker for piano. Add in some strings and that is it, all my hard man of rock pretences are stripped bare. Sure, there is a touch of the “Love Story” theme here and there but we all need a weepie once in a while. Sniff!

Mono make films without pictures. This one is a blockbuster.

(9/10  Matt Mason)

https://www.facebook.com/monoofjapan

https://monoofjapan.bandcamp.com/album/pilgrimage-of-the-soul