MONO

Going to a Mono concert – which, by unfortunate coincidence, takes place on a stormy Bologna night – one might expect, upon entering the venue, to find a drawn curtain that, once the lights go down, slowly opens to reveal the four of them seated at their stations, ready to play, as if in a dream. Instead, no. Once the Hermitage's set is over – original purveyors of a fizzy, post-psychedelic rock – our guys walk onstage like any other rock band, greet the crowd with a stern air – typically Eastern, one might say – and pick up their instruments: that's the moment their humble transfiguration takes place. No more string orchestras, no more sumptuous melodic embellishments: a Mono concert is unmissable because it strips them bare, restoring dominance to guitar echoes, distorted nebulae and tomb-like silences; in a sense, the fallibility of sound is regained, something that on a record like "Hymn To The Immortal Wind" was certainly not allowed for, in the attempt to create an "absolute" musical product. The extraordinary "Ashes In The Snow" sets us up for a good hour of jolts, of cautious litanies turning fierce, hushed passages turning piercingly loud.

Certain modern post-rock manages somehow to lift the listener off the ground, simulating a fragile levitation; following the paths of Mono's latest record, on the other hand, is like sinking into an abyss, slowly but relentlessly, until every last breath is gone from your body. In this sense, "Burial At Sea" becomes both funeral march and celebration of the soul, rendered insignificant in the face of the ocean's vastness (though not thereby absent); a sacredness made authentic by the steady tolling of the golden gong behind the drummer. Amid the motionless crowd, it occurs to me that plenty of people still consider Mono's music cloying, self-referential and pompous – and it probably is. But one thing is certain: with every listen the impact of this music remains undiminished, indeed it often grows even more devastating, and "Hymn To The Immortal Wind" is the blatant proof of that.

"The Kidnapper Bell" is a considerable leap into the past for Mono: nearly ten years separate us from the period when anyone hearing this track could have mistaken them for Mogwai, or at least for one of the many bands that followed in their footsteps; today we could easily pick them out among dozens of other groups who in turn try to emulate their mighty soundscapes. "Pure As Snow" is a welcome return to the present, a swelling sonic whirlwind that swallows up the crowd, by now thoroughly galvanized by the amplifiers' vibrations.

Live, the songs never seem to want to end: Mono hold the melodies to the extreme, squeezing them dry, gradually turning them into sonic tangles that progressively lose their tonality, eventually becoming an ethereal chaos. So the lulling atmospheres of the latest record and of the splendid "Sabbath" are interrupted by the mounting violence of "Yearning", a (rightly) celebrated piece from their repertoire, taken from 2006's "You Are There"; the muffled tread of the first few minutes is merely the prelude to a sonic apocalypse that you couldn't even imagine in the comfort of your own bedroom, even at an outrageous volume; it's the true emotional core of the performance, unforgettable and irreplaceable.

The predictable closer, "Everlasting light", is the best farewell one could hope for: a light that never abandons us, a perpetual song of hope that we could go on listening to for a long while yet. The final bolero is truly a celestial vision, the benediction at the end of the ceremony. Sadly, the show is over, go in peace. And we surely will.

(27/03/2010)

Special thanks to deSna B. for the invaluable photographic contribution

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