Mono - Walking Cloud & Deep Red Sky Flag Fluttered & Sun - VINYL LP

Just in time for their 10-year anniversary, Mono return with their fifth studio album, the absolutely massive Hymn To The Immortal Wind. The music is naturally majestic, with Mono's trademark wall of noise crashing beautifully against the largest chamber orchestra the band has ever enlisted. The instrumentation is vast, incorporating strings, flutes, organ, piano, glockenspiel and tympani into their standard face-melting set-up. While Hymn continues to mine the cinematic drama inherent in all of Mono's music, the dynamic shifts now come more from dark-to-light instead of quiet-to-loud. The maturity to balance these elements so masterfully has become Mono's strongest virtue - save for perhaps their uncanny ability to sound every bit like a plane crashing into a Beethoven concert.

Double vinyl LP pressing. 2021 from the Tokyo, Japan-based instrumental rock band. Mono's unique approach of blending orchestral arrangements and shoegaze guitar noise has been held in extremely high regard - NME classified it as Inchmusic for the GodsInch.

When Mono recorded their previous album, OATH, withlongtime production partner and friend, Steve Albini in 2023,they never fathomed that it would be the final studio albumthey made together. Albini tragically died the following year,and that loss left an incalculable void in the lives of not justeveryone who ever knew Steve, but everyone with anattachment to any of the thousands of records he helpedbring into world over the past four decades. He brought aclarity to the chaos, and a selfless sense of service to art andartists that was unrivaled. On both a personal and practicallevel, the loss left Mono faced with profound grief anduncertainty. Albini had become a fundamental part ofMono's unmistakable sound, and the thought of replacinghim was daunting, to say the least. Enter Brad Wood(Touché Amoré, The Smashing Pumpkins).Chosen for both his familiarity with Mono's creative andtechnical working process - as well as his decades-longfriendship with Steve Albini - Brad Wood entered Albini'sstoried Electrical Audio studios in September 2025 to recordwhat would become Snowdrop. Once again working withChicago-based conductor and orchestral musical director,Chad McCullough, Mono enlisted a 10-piece orchestra aswell as an 8-piece choir for the eight massive pieces thatmake up Snowdrop. With the band performing and Woodrecording in the same hallowed space where most ofMono's records had been made in their quarter-centuryhistory, the songs on Snowdrop carry an extra weight. Mixedby Wood at his Seagrass home studio in Los Angeles, thealbum is equally intimate and enveloping.Where there could easily be a pall hanging over Snowdrop,there is instead an extraordinary air of gratitude. Rather thansteep in heartache, there is a poignant appreciation for theresonance of life well-spent with a dear friend - and theyearning for what may come. Snowdrop is the sound of aband turning shock