From chaos comes MONO.
All at once beautiful and brutal, the music of the Japanese instrumental rock band has come to represent the nexus between music and art. Throughout a career spanning 18 years and 10 albums, MONO have consistently transcended the established boundaries of style and form, defining and redefining the realms of art and noise-rock along the way.
This November, MONO return to Australia to perform their 2016 album ‘Requiem For Hell’ as well as songs from their extensive back catalogue. It will be the tenth anniversary of when they first toured here and guitarist Takaakira ‘Taka’ Goto has some profound words for audiences about the upcoming shows.
“I strongly feel it would be great if we could reach deep into each listener’s heart and give them light through the darkness,” Taka says.
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MONO have always dabbled in light and darkness, balancing dramatic and brooding passages with celestial counterpoints to conjure a moving soundscape of cinematic quality. This exchange is taken to a literal degree on ‘Requiem For Hell’ with the album tied conceptually to Dante’s classic narrative poem, ‘The Divine Comedy’.
“Normally when I was finished with writing the demos each song started connecting to each other,” Taka explains. “This time it didn’t connect and I was wondering [why]… I read ‘The Divine Comedy’ and I thought ‘hey, are these connected?’. ‘The Divine Comedy’ was like a jigsaw puzzle that combined with my songs to be one.”
Upon reading ‘The Divine Comedy’, Taka traced links between the progression of songs on ‘Requiem For Hell’ and the journey taken by Dante through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. The second track on the album, ‘Stellar’, refers to the recurring motif of stars in the poem; each of its three principal parts – Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso – concludes with the word ‘stelle’ or star.
“Dante went to Hell [Inferno] and he lost everything,” Taka says. “He couldn’t recognise which is the left side and which is the right side, which is the front and which is the back; he cannot even recognise where he is at the time.
“But he saw the ‘stelle’ and he is starting walking [sic] to see the ‘stelle’, and the books are long but each sentence always Dante [sic] is seeing the ‘stelle’, and this is why I made the title of the second song ‘Stellar’.”
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Anyone who has seen MONO in concert can attest to the sheer power of their live performances and the awe inspired by the incredible wall of sound produced by just four musicians. When MONO come to Australia in November, audiences will bear witness to the ferocious foursome rightly considered one of the greatest rock acts to come out of Japan.
Taka says he and his bandmates are particularly excited about the Australian tour and revitalising the angry, live energy he felt they lacked on the North American tour. “I didn’t want to share about romantic things [sic],” he says.
“I feel it works because it’s stronger and f@#%ing louder and it’s violent, but it’s still beautiful and still we can share some important things.”
MONO Tour Dates
Wed 8 Nov - The Triffid (Brisbane)Thu 9 Nov - Manning Bar (Sydney)
Fri 10 Nov - Max Watts (Melbourne)
Sat 11 Nov - Unibar (Adelaide)
Sun 12 Nov - Badlands (Perth)
