Artist: Mono
Album Title: Hymn To The Immortal Wind
Catalog No.: KWR005
Format: CD
Street Date: 6 April 2008
Label: KittyWu Records under exclusive license
by Human Highway Records for Singapore
Track List:
1. Ashes In e Snow (11.46)
2. Burial At Sea (10.39)
3. Silent Flight, Sleeping Dawn (6.00)
4. Pure As Snow (Trails Of e Winter Storm) (11.26)
5. Follow e Map (3.56)
6. e Battle Of Heaven (12.51)
7. Everlasting Light (10.23)
Just in time for their 10-year anniversary, MONO return with their h studio album, the absolutely massive Hymn To The Immortal Wind.
After touring almost non-stop for five years, the band hibernated for over a year to focus solely on writing Hymn. The result is their most thoughtful and eclectic album to date.
Written and arranged with a hopeful, romantic narrative in mind, the songs string together like chapters in an epic love story. The music is naturally majestic, with MONO’s trademark wall of noise crashing beautifully against the largest chamber orchestra the band has ever enlisted. The instrumentation is vast, incorporating strings, flutes, organ, piano, glockenspiel and tympani into their standard face-melting set-up.
Recorded to analog tape with long-time friend and producer Steve Albini, there is an intimacy captured here that is at once beautiful and a little terrifying. The creaking of old
wooden chairs as the orchestra rocks in their seats (both literally and guratively), puckered lips rolling along utes, and even the conductor’s opening cue can be heard during the
hauntingly quiet opening moments.
While Hymn continues to mine the cinematic drama inherent in all of MONO’s music, the dynamic shifts now come more from dark-to-light instead of quiet-to-loud. The maturity to balance these elements so masterfully has become MONO’s strongest virtue.
Reviews:
Pitchfork // NME // Sputnik Music // Dusted // Coke Machine Glow // Prefix // Popmatters
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