Music That Saves, And Searches For Meaning

Often revered in the same breath as instrumental post-rock heavy weights Mogwai, Japan's MONO are headed to our shores to end the year almost 200 shows deep. From the outside they appear to be the same hard working four piece, though as Taka Goto explains, the writing and release of 2014's double album The Last Dawn/Rays Of Darkness was fraught with soul searching of both the musical and personal kind.

"The two albums ended up representing the counter points in life; light and darkness, hope and hopelessness, love and loss — the emotions which can't be expressed, pain which you can't put into words, happiness which you can't simply measure. We also at the same time felt and hoped that they could be something to exceed the darkness. It might sound arrogant, but as a composer I write music that would save me, and also allows me to think and look for the meaning of life..." says lead guitarist Takaakira "Taka" Goto.

"We started to feel as [though] our sounds were like a spineless dinosaur compared to our old sounds."

Over several albums, MONO incorporated strings and orchestral elements to become more cinematic in their rock approach, though decided enough was enough when preparing for the 2014 releases, and this year's Trascendental EP. "I originally wanted to create something original, symphonic and spiritual — like Beethoven but with electric guitars. We managed to experience so many things, more than any indie band can ask for, like playing with a full orchestra in New York, London, Australia and Tokyo. From these experiences, we tried something more complex and classical for For My Parents but at the same time we started to raise some concerns. During the album's American tour, we started to feel as [though] our sounds were like a spineless dinosaur compared to our old sounds. Sure, symphonic music is loud, epic and dreamy, but there is something lacking compared to rock music, like the pressure and destruction it can bring," Goto admits.

"We originally started off as a four-piece, and even though our concerns started to rise much earlier, we just took them as a required risk to challenge something new. But as we toured more, we started to know for certain that our feelings were right. Going back to our original roots was an easy thing to do, but also we all didn't want to do what we had already done. I really thought about this a lot. I needed to find a new method that could show my current emotions, and I truly believe that will allow us to see a new world."

With order restored, MONO continue to explore their strengths as an instrumental rock outfit, and as with most bands that fall loosely into the post-rock sound, they're quite dismissive of the term. "We don't have any interest towards what genres we belong in, but because of the huge post-rock movement we got the opportunity to draw our vision on a big white canvas and share [it] with everyone in the world, so we're very thankful for that," says Goto. "We want to continue to do what we do in pride, while being thankful for the fact that we're living in the time where we can share and express the possibility, mentality, imagination, spirituality, love, apathy and individualism that instrumental music can bring."