Band:	Mono
Album:	Nowhere Now Here
Style:	Post-rock
Release date:	January 25, 2019
A review by:	RaduP

01. God Bless
02. After You Comes The Flood
03. Breathe
04. Nowhere, Now Here
05. Far And Further
06. Sorrow
07. Parting
08. Meet Us Where The Night Ends
09. Funeral Song
10. Vanishing, Vanishing Maybe

Mono was formed in 1999. Twenty years later, they are still as vital as ever.

Mono have arrived at a pretty important point in post-rock's history. Along with acts like Explosions In The Sky, they arrived in the awkward and important spot between the second and the third wave of post-rock, as in too late to be actual progenitors like Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Sigur Rós and early enough to still be massively influential to actual third wave bands like Yndi Halda, 65daysofstatic or God Is An Astronaut, by whose time post-rock has more or less became a defined genre. And despite their first release coming out before LYSFLATH, they're often lumped with the latter group because of how much they sound like the other bands in said group.

Now on to the album itself; it's quite a heavy thing to do to still be interesting and creative in your tenth album, even more so in a genre focused on repetitions and layer-building, to a point where there's only so much more you can do to sound expansive before it becomes saturated and dull. One issue that Mono seem to be having every now and then is having extremely well-done build-ups whose releases don't really reach the promised highs. None of it is bad, but very few moments like the ones in "After You Comes The Flood" and "Meet Us Where The Night Ends" feel like the destination is actually extraordinarily satisfying. So, to twist the narrative, even with some less inspired sections, Mono still manages to create rewarding crescendo-core.

What Mono definitely has going for them is that it really feels like both a celebration of everything they've done and a desire to keep moving forward and trying new things. For one, this is a band that started out as a four-piece with the standard rock instruments but slowly started incorporating strings and other orchestral elements to the point where there's about 30 of those, and classical influences are clearly felt throughout the later part of their discography, and obviously here as well, in great quantity. And this is also the band's first album with new drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla, who offers a noticeably different and livelier feel to the drums, and there's one song that actually includes vocals, and not those whispers or vocalizations but actual vocals by Tamaki on "Breathe". Not only that, but there's some shallow and secluded bits of electronics that creep their way in from time to time.

Even if not every moment works as well as it should, Mono prove that they still have something to say and that a lineup change can work in their favour to help them shake up their established sound a bit, as well as through other means. Nowhere Now Here is a beautiful and emotional way to celebrate everything that Mono has and will continue to give us. So when the night ends, meet them.