After COVID-19 first swept the world in 2020, MONO felt compelled to make a special little gift for the Christmas holiday. The accompanying message was simple: “Wishing everyone good health, happiness, and good cheer in the new year.” Originally made at home in isolation, this digital-only release consisted of two new MONO songs: “Scarlet Holliday” and “First Winter.” Now, to commemorate the 2021 holiday season, MONO has reworked and expanded Scarlet Holliday into a very special 3-song EP (now including the brand new song, “Epilogue”). Recorded at home and at Electrical Audio by longtime collaborator, Steve Albini, newly mixed by John McEntire and mastered by Bob Weston, Scarlet Holliday is finally being released into the world on limited-edition 10” vinyl, as well as all digital formats. In their unflappable determination to shine light into the darkness, MONO explains: “These songs were written with the idea of new hope for the new year since this time has become unforeseeably dark for many in the world.

Pilgrimage of the Soul is the 11th studio album in the 22-year career of Japanese experimental rock legends, MONO. Recorded and mixed – cautiously, anxiously, yet optimistically – during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020, Pilgrimage of the Soul is aptly named as it not only represents the peaks and valleys where MONO are now as they enter their third decade, but also charts their long, steady journey to this time and place. Continuing the subtle but profound creative progression in the MONO canon that began with Nowhere Now Here (2019), Pilgrimage of the Soul is the most dynamic MONO album to date (and that’s saying a lot). But where MONO’s foundation was built on the well-established interplay of whisper quiet and devastatingly loud, Pilgrimage of the Soul crafts its magic with mesmerizing new electronic instrumentation and textures, and – perhaps most notably – faster tempos that are clearly influenced by disco and techno. It all galvanizes as the most unexpected MONO album to date – replete with surprises and as awash in splendor as anything this band has ever done.

mono2002年作品！

Tokyo’s Mono is a peculiar group. While most bands offer up their sincerest and most genuine recordings in their infancy and spend the rest of their careers trying desperately to rediscover their youthful energy, Mono's trajectory has been quite the opposite. This flourish of hopeful creativity was captured by Steve Albini in the form of the eight pieces that make up their third album Walking Cloud And Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered And The Sun Shined. More lush and orchestral than previous recordings, the album couples an overall slow-melting ambience with a thunderous drive that reaches far greater heights than the band’s earlier work.

For My Parents
After years of exploring, searching ourselves, and composing pieces here and there, we found ourselves with more questions than answers.
When we could not find these answers in the outside world, we were bound to turn inward. And so we went back to our roots.
This is something we wanted to do while we still have the chance. What cannot be explained in words to parents, we hope can be captured by these songs.
We hope that this album serves as a gift from child to parent. While everything else continues to change, this love remains a constant throughout time.
——Mono

NYC 现场专辑

The conflict and correlation between dark and light is a universal theme with a historically rich history. Musically, perhaps no band in the 21st Century has mined that relationship more consistently or effectively than Japan’s MONO.
Across 10 albums in 20 years, MONO have convincingly reflected the quietest and most chaotic parts of life through their music. Their ever-expanding instrumental palette – which began in earnest in 1999 with the traditional guitar-bass-drums rock band setup – has evolved to include as many as 30 orchestral instruments. Now, on Nowhere Now Here, the band add electronics to their repertoire – perhaps inspired by guitarist/composer Takaakira ‘Taka’ Goto’s recent collaboration with John McEntire, the beguiling Behind the Shadow Drops. Nowhere Now Here also sees MONO’s first-ever lineup change, adding new drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla (The Phantom Family Halo) to the core trio of Goto, Tamaki, and Yoda. Tamaki also makes her vocal debut here, singing into the shadows of vintage Nico on the poetically hazy “Breathe.”
The unlikely career of MONO has taken them to virtually every corner of the planet, several times over. Those corners have all left indelible marks on their music, as it drills deeper towards the sound of feeling not quite human and all too human – often at the same time.

Phonographic Copyright (p) – Forty-4
Copyright (c) – Forty-4
Credits:
Mastered By – Cozy Noda
Mixed By – Masashi Yabuhara
Recorded By – Tetsuya Morioka, Toshiro Kai
Sound Designer – Mono (7)
Notes:
"Mono's first contact"
Sound Designed: Mono (Tamaki, Takaakira Goto, Yasunori Takada & Yoda)
Limited to 1000 copies.

MONO’ s 9th album “Requiem For Hell” to be released on October 14th!
This album was produced, recorded and mixed by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago, and mastered by Bob Weston. Steve Albini, the producer and one of the main participants of this album, was already a producer for 3 of MONO’s albums in the past, and just last year, his band Shellac played their first Japan tour in 23 years as a co-headliner tour with MONO. After the recordings, MONO and Shellac shared the stage again in North America.
“Requiem For Hell” features 5 songs. Unlike the last double album “The Last Dawn / Rays Of Darkness”, which re-visited the band’s early sound, MONO introduces strings once again, showing broader dynamics and a wider range of sounds.
From TAKAAKIRA ‘TAKA’ GOTO / MONO:
“This album is a series of songs from a flood of inspirations in 2015. After writing song after song and giving them titles, we stumbled upon Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and the story struck a chord with us. “Divine Comedy” is a story about travelling down to Hell, through to purgatory… this is when we decided to use Gustave Dóre’s illustration from “Divine Comedy”’s last scene as the main cover.”
“Requiem For Hell” comes as a 2xLP in a special slipcase cover with a die cut hole on the back side, printed inner sleeves and an engraving on side D, showing a foetus.
Comments Taka Goto:
“Our long-time friend Jeremy (the owner of our American label Temporary Residence) had his first-born, she was named Ely. Jeremy had been sending us photos and her heartbeats from long before she was born. When Ely was born, we decided to dedicate one of our songs to her, with hopes of her listening to it when she is grown up, and decided to use her heartbeats as an intro on the song “Ely’s Heartbeat”.

This collaboration with fellow Tokyo native and modern electronic composer World's End Girlfriend is a five-part sojourn of neoclassical grace and luminescence that defies lazy categorization. As dark as the bottom of the ocean and nearly as otherworldly, "Palmless" finds Mono inhabiting a magical world previously only hinted at in their most orchestral compositions. Forgoing their tendency to erupt into hellish bursts of speaker-destroying noise, Mono instead exhibits remarkable restraint, stretching song lengths past the 15-minute mark, turning barely-there crescendos into earth-shaking events. This record is a miniature panoramic view of the sea on an eerily still day, the current swaying at an impossibly lazy pace, and the sound of a thousand tiny waves crashing all at once.

CRB 001
Mono《Hymn to the Immortal Wind》
黑洞唱片荣誉发行，Human Highway Records官方指定发行，中国地区独家发行！
温暖春意，黑洞唱片亮色系列正式起航，推出Post Rock界著名日本乐队MONO的全新专辑《Hymn To The Immortal Wind》中国地区引进版！
MONO乐队10年音乐里程之见证，首次运用交响元素，MONO后摇音乐全新超凡体验汇集于《Hymn To The Immortal Wind》。
全24页全彩色内页文案，7首出色作品，造就2009年最完美的概念性专辑！
发行时间：2009.4