Originally
published in Skyscraper,
reprinted in Measure
The Japanese band Mono clearly benefits
from the influence of Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor, and
if you like those bands, you can’t go wrong with the pleasantly
titled One Step More and You Die. The album’s showpiece
”Com(?)” is pillowed by two soft short songs, “Where
Am I” (which starts the album beautifully) and “Sabbath.”
Those songs serve like the padding around a concrete column, prevent
skateboarders from cracking their skulls open on an immovable
mass. “Com(?)” starts out like a sun shower, then
gradually builds until it climaxes in a perfect storm of guitar,
drums and distortion. In its backwash, ”Sabbath” sounds
like waking up early on a Sunday morning, knowing you’re
not going to church, and deciding to stay in bed. Your break from
the assault continues with “Mopish Morning, Halation Wiper,”
a pretty, distorted track, but then the violence returns. At first,
“A Speeding Car” sounds more like a smooth late-night
ride with the windows down and the moon peering benevolently down
from above. Until you run a red light about halfway through and
get pulled over by the cops. Then they tell you to get out of
your car, throw you down on the ground and kick you in the head
a few times before you black out. It just builds that way. The
rest of the album continues with these alternating bouts of calm
and violence. It’s cover art features a remarkable black
and white close-up of a horse’s head, it’s dark sullen
eye about to leave the right side of the frame. You can’t
quite decide if the animal is beautiful, beastly or both—probably
both. And that’s a fitting representation of Mono’s
gritty, meditative, and often explosive work here.
Official
site
Robert Stribley
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