Mono bring epic drama to New York on a rainy Monday

September 28, 2009, at the Bowery Ballroom

By E.K. Buckley
Published: September 30th, 2009 | 6:00pm

Japanese powerhouse Mono played New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on the second leg of the tour that followed their 2009 release, Hymn to the Immortal Wind (Temporary Residence Limited) — although this time without Jeff Milarsky’s 23-piece orchestra backing them up. Raining on a Monday and right after Yom Kippur, Mono still packed the house — and with an eye-catching copper-toned gong suspended center stage to boot.

The lights went down as openers Maserati filtered on stage. Drummer Jerry Fuchs’ powerful and skilled drumming was fun to watch, but the show fell flat. The 45-minute set of wordless, deconstructed classic rock sounded like diluted and over-extended rips of Eminence Front and Teenage Wasteland formatted for Muzak. After, the compositions of Arvo Pärt came on the speakers as the audience waited for the Tokyo power quartet to take their places.

Mono — which includes Takaakira Goto on guitar; Tamaki Kunishi on bass, keyboard, and xylophone; Yoda on guitar; and Yasunori Takada, drums, sythesizer, gong, and glockenspiel — came on in orchestral black attire. The pre-emptive music by Pärt had a mystical affect on the crowd, or at least on this reviewer who felt like she was in attendance for a divine and horrible sort of Vespers.

On the stage, as if to heighten this non-secular vibe, the two guitarists knelt and flanked Kunishi who, standing above them, gently struck the xylophone and played a staccato melody that seemed like quietly cracking ice. Then, the increase began.

Drummer Takada’s washy felt mallets on percussion layered tidal increases in the opening song, while the vibrato effect of the mandolin-like guitar strumming evoked a constant trembling tension that scaled up, up, up, and then steadily down. Kunishi abandoned the xylophone and took up her bass for the conflagration of sound in 4/4 time which grew louder and more frenzied with each pound of the drums, until the thrilling gong strike that marked its feverish end — an exclamation point worthy of the culmination of Ravel’s Bolero.

The second song began. Music befitting a spaghetti western thread throughout the ballroom. The gorgeous guitar notes were lazy and suspended, drawing to mind Ennio Morricone. Later, this ear-shattering song came with the added effect of white light bathing the stage in perfect metronomic time to the epic drum beat, which evoked the strobe of an automatic gun going off in the dark.

The last songs brought guitarists Goto and Yoda to their knees — Goto giving his chair a rockstar round kick as he hoisted his guitar skyward to draw the feedback he wanted. Heart-stopping crescendos had the crowd pulsing as one while Goto and Yoda seemed in throws of demonic possession — Goto bent flat with fists that slammed the stage next to the violently discarded guitar.

Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor commonly get name-checked in discussion of the music from ten-year veteran post rockers, Mono. So, if you like this; yes, you will likely enjoy that. Mono delivers big, violent orchestral drama fit for epic cinema.

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Temporary Residence Limited