Mono

It builds.
And builds.
Louder and louder.
Building and growing and reaching out towards you.
Invisible to the eye but it’s all around you.
Still building.
Still growing.
Touching you.
And then you break.
Something inside – some previously untouched nerve or unfelt heartstring – snaps.
And inside you cry uncontrollably. How can one band – a band that doesn’t say a single word the entire time they’re on stage – have such emotive powers, and why are fifty percent of those gathered talking over the top of them?

The Mono live experience is like nothing else. The Japanese quartet can be categorised as post-rock, if that sort of thing makes your beard happy, but really do offer so much more than their peers, if, indeed, the post-rock contingent really are their peers. You can wax lyrical about how incredible Explosions In The Sky are until you’re blue in the face – I won’t care. You can tell me that Sigur Ros leave you in a post-orgasmic state every time one of their epic fairy tales of ghouls and goblins rumbles to a close – I’ll be left cold. Why? Because Mono are something else. One, the noise is unprecedented: the Garage has been shaken before, but when Taka stamps down on the pedal of his choosing, it fears for its foundations. Two, no other band can switch so effortlessly from skin-searing walls of white noise to the kind of instrumental introspection that makes you weep, literally (I very nearly did). Three, if any other band was this good they’d be telling the world and its aunt about themselves, yet Mono keep themselves to themselves, smile politely when rapturous applause is afforded them, and slink off into the shadows. They are breathtaking, mentally and physically moving, and might just be the finest example of contemporary instrumental songwriting on the planet – if you were to travel back in time and leave Beethoven alone in a Bavarian castle for a year with nothing but an electric guitar, a fat amp and some effects pedals, he couldn’t touch this. Mono are at the top of their game. They are, in short, phenomenal.

Once the fifty percent wise up there’ll be a musical revolution on our hands.