Mono

The Tokyo instrumental band whose 2009 album Hymn to the Immortal Wind, recorded with Steve Albini and a full orchestra, opens with the 11-minute "Ashes in the Snow".

Tokyo, 1999

Takaakira "Taka" Goto began composing for Mono in January 1999, with Hideki "Yoda" Suematsu joining on rhythm guitar; Tamaki Kunishi and Yasunori Takada had joined by December 1999, and the first show was in late January 2000 at Club 251 in Setagaya, Tokyo. Goto chose the name partly for easy pronunciation and partly to signal a single focus. Early influences were Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, later Beethoven, Morricone and Gorecki, and Goto has also named Arvo Part. Wikipedia describes the music as instrumental, guitar-based, contemporary classical and post-rock, though Goto has rejected the post-rock label. He told Echoes that two electric guitars combined are a more beautiful voice of the human, and Time Out quoted him that music is communicating the incommunicable.

This is the Tokyo band, not the UK trip-hop duo of the same name. Takada left in 2017, announced on December 9 that year citing personal reasons, and Dahm Majuri Cipolla has played drums since 2018.

The records

Under the Pipal Tree came out on Tzadik in 2001, with the session funded by John Zorn and recorded mostly live in one day; One Step More and You Die followed in 2002. Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined (2004) was recorded in January 2004 with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago, and You Are There (2006) with Albini in February and September 2005. The band took a one-year break in 2008, and recorded Hymn to the Immortal Wind that June and November.

For My Parents (September 4, 2012, with the Wordless Music Orchestra) was their first album in eight years not recorded by Albini. The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness (2014), Requiem for Hell (2016, Pelagic), Nowhere Now Here (January 25, 2019, Albini, the first with Cipolla), Pilgrimage of the Soul (September 17, 2021) and OATH (2024, Albini at Electrical Audio) followed; Albini died in 2024, after OATH. Snowdrop (2026) was recorded at Electrical Audio with Brad Wood producing, with a 10-piece orchestra and an 8-piece choir, and the band says it expresses gratitude for people they have lost, each title tied to the meaning of a flower. The official site lists tour dates into 2027 across Europe, the UK and Australia.