There's nothing like good ambient music and the following is the best thing I've heard from that genre thus far.
You Are There by Mono
Okay I've actually tried to write something to describe this 6 track album, but failed. I wondered however why it was so hard for me to put it into words when listening to them made me feel so much, waves of emotions steadily building and either crashing hard or coming down gently. And so I looked for reviews to see how someone would actually go about describing these tracks and then I found this and it made me smile [only posting parts since it's so long]:
"Mono is the blueprint. You are the builder, the hard-topped henchman of your own next hour. Where you go once this album rumbles into life on your stereo, only you decide. How it moves you – vigorous, slightly, absolutely – is entirely dependent on your at-this-moment mood. You can read it, hear it, only two ways: either it grasps you, leaving you fumbling blindly through its entirety, entirely enraptured, or it renders you cold. Latter parties, these following paragraphs serve you no worthwhile purpose.
How, exactly, does an alleged critic accurately convey their thoughts, their feelings, now? Should they – I – strip You Are There back to its basic component parts: guitar, twice, bass and drums. Or should they indulge so far as is lexically possible, personally, as the record in question demands? Not for themselves, but because standard-issue terminology, the tried-and-tested adjectives and ulterior acts of referential relevance, simply don’t, can’t, summarize a record such as this. What is one – me – left with once the safety’s off and there’s fuck all in the way of a net beneath to fall into.
This is stream of conscious, as it comes, nothing more. If you’re wanting some artificial, hackneyed view on this record, please do look elsewhere. There you’ll find your safety nets, your rigged-into-position comparisons and generic pigeonholing. That’s where you’ll read about the record, rather than the after effects of. That’s where it’ll make more sense, this reviewing business. ‘Business’. The very word is tantamount to a tight grip about the throat, choking, obstructing. Not all music need be assimilated in such a secondary fashion; it doesn’t have to be dressing to experiences determined by factors beyond its immediate impact. It can be the experience.
Play ‘Yearning’, song three of six, for seven-and-a-half minutes. Take a breath. Deep. Exhale, travel. The music about you explodes as your own synapses tweak and tumble into an expanse of black – no sides, no grip, just down and down and down. Spiraling, dizzying, disorientating – the drums pound but your balance is so left of center that no single foot can tap in time. Instead the body convulses, twitches and spasms – some kind of otherworldly ecstasy descended onto your tongue via your ears, bypassing your brain completely. There’s no thought, no predetermination. This just is. And fuck you if you’re about to get self-conscious about it: go, move, fall, stand, raise a fist so high you damn near lose an arm, the flesh about your shoulder stretching to some status beyond safety, the pain in your neck intense and wonderful, sharp and crisp and perfect.
And then sigh your own name in gratitude as the piece crashes to an echo of dust and bones twelve of its allotted fifteen-and-a-half in. Sigh theirs, sigh mine, sigh his; fuck it, sigh however you will: exhalation will occur, and how you shape your tongue at the time is entirely of your personal preference. Tell me latterly though, do; after all, I’ve laid my cards – proverbial, I have none to hand – upon this table, where they’ve laid since the very first line of this ‘review’."
To read this brilliant review by Mike Diver in its entirety go here:
http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/7348http://www.myspace.com/monojp [check out Yearning]
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excited
good
calm
cheerful
blah
disappointed
bouncy
