MONO Shares Video For “Breathe” Featuring Vocals by Bassist Tamaki

MONO just released a new video for “Breathe” with vocals by bassist Tamaki. MONO filmed the video with director, Julien Levy in a basement bar in Shibuya, Tokyo.  Their new album, “Nowhere Now Here” is set to release on January 25, 2019 via Temporary Residence Ltd. and Pelagic Records. One fan described “Breathe” as follows, “The word ‘perfection’ is a serious understatement when describing Mono….their art is truly life-changing.”

MONO formed in Tokyo in 1999 with band members, Takaakira “Taka” Goto (electric guitar, glockenspiel) Hideki “Yoda” Suematsu (electric guitar, glockenspiel), Dahm Majuri Cipolla (drums), and Tamaki Kunishi (bass guitar, electric guitar, piano, glockenspiel). Their music is so beautiful and relaxing, it takes you on an imaginative journey in your mind. For starters, you have to surrender completely and relax while you take in the harmonic sounds.

MONO has released nine albums including, Under the Pipal Tree (2001), One Step More and You Die (2002), Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined (2004), You Are There (2006), Hymn to the Immortal Wind (2009), Holy Ground: NYC Live With The Wordless Music Orchestra (2010), Requiem for Hell (2016) and their new album will be released in January 2019.

Their musical style is characterized by dynamic, guitar-based instrumental soundscapes, the majority of which are composed by lead guitarist Takaakira Goto, in an attempt to channel and express the emotions of joy and sorrow. The band’s style of music originally featured elements of minimalism and noise, and later developed to integrate more complex, orchestral arrangements and instrumentation.

MONO’s music has been categorized as both contemporary classical and post-rock but Goto  stated in a TimeOut article, “Music is communicating the incommunicable; that means a term like post-rock doesn’t mean much to us, as the music needs to transcend genre to be meaningful.”

MONO has toured worldwide several times and their shows feature intense and emotional playing by the band members, as well as using extreme dynamics (in crescendos as well as diminuendos) in their attempt to create an “unforgettable” live performance. When recording their music, the band has always played live in the studio and, from 2004’s Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined to 2009’s Hymn to the Immortal Wind, worked with Chicagoan recording engineer Steve Albini, whom they feel accurately captured a live band’s raw emotion.