Mono

Tokyo, Japan's Mono are 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.

Their early recordings are a visceral homage to their past and present heroes -- the documents of a band boasting an impressive symphony of sound in spite of their relatively small line-up. These days, they have become one of the most passionately aggressive rock bands of the last decade, executing their soaring crescendos, titanic sheets of distortion and dark melodies with the delicacy and precision of a folded paper crane.

Shedding their past and looking towards the future, Mono now find their inspirations not just from song, but from story as well -- particularly Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, the famous tale of a young Japanese girl who developed leukemia in 1955 from the effects of radiation caused by the bombing of Hiroshima. Sadako's closest friend, visiting her in the hospital, recounted the Japanese legend that the gods bestow marvelous wishes unto anyone who successfully folds one-thousand paper cranes. Determined and hopeful, wishing for a cure, she began folding.

Mono are driven to create for the hope of what that creativity can bring. Often described as "the soundtrack to the end of the world," their hopeful new direction can more aptly be the soundtrack to a new beginning.

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.

Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky... is a familiar picture of someone you once knew, with a vibrant transcendence that you don't recall. Rather than mourn our inevitable deaths, we are reminded to celebrate the life that draws us closer.

- Jeremy deVine