Mono

Echo - September 24, 2005

Live Review by Daniel Brody

Tokyo's Mono are a four-piece band with your basic two-guitar, bass and drums lineup, but that is where their normalcy ends.  The guitars are played to sound like violins, there are no vocals, and the band's songs are quiet-to-loud-back-to-quiet instrumental jams that sound like a rough draft of Sigur Ros.  Going to a Mono show is unlike most other concerts.  Except for brief applause after every song, the audience was absolutely silent in between songs, as if they were in an art gallery staring at a painting.  Barely audible sounds like the security guard's scanner and ice clinking in a glass could be heard across the room, overpowering the mute audience and even the quieter parts of Mono's songs. 

The songs all followed a similar pattern; starting off slowly with loosely picked bass and guitar notes, full of reverb and wafting through the air for several minutes, until some drums kicked in at the tempo of a slow clap.  At that point the band would make an orchestral and sweeping clamor, the sound of drifting upwards towards Heaven.  But as David Byrne once sang, Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens--a sentiment that sums up the Mono sound.  There's no doubt that the jams are pretty, and the aid of some drugs might even make the music sound transcendent.  But, after a while, they all sounded pretty much the same.  Mono rarely looked up from their instruments, said nothing between songs, and at times the drummer looked like he fell asleep behind the kit waiting for his next entrance. 

Mono's music feels soothing when listened to lying down and moving in and out of sleep.  Transferred to a stuffy concert venue, standing next to an awkwardly silent audience, it loses some of its drifting and lilting magic.  Be sure to bring a lounge chair and an ice cold glass of lemonade with you the next time you see them.