Mono

Enigmatic dance-pop project Mono Mind created by Per Gessle is based in Sweden, but features input from collaborators based around the world. Initial single "Sugar Rush" was briefly made available in 2016, but the project made its formal debut with "Save a Place" in 2017. While the group was presented with collage-like portrait graphics and pseudonymous members, the song featured vocals by Helena Josefsson and Roxette's Per Gessle, and publishing information revealed that David Guetta co-wrote the song. Following its release in July of 2017, "Save Me a Place" began picking up airplay, and climbed up the Billboard Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart.

It's often unfair to compare the Rolling Stones to the Beatles but in the case of the group's mono mixes, it's instructive. Until the 2009 release of the box set The Beatles in Mono, all of the Fab Four's mono mixes were out of print. That's not the case with the Rolling Stones. Most of their '60s albums – released on Decca in the U.K., London in the U.S. – found mono mixes sneaking onto either the finished sequencing or various singles compilations, so the 2016 box The Rolling Stones in Mono only contains 56 heretofore unavailable mono mixes among its 186 tracks…

Caught like many other mid-'90s male instrumentalist/female singer duos were in the commercial slipstream of Portishead's success, Mono deftly steered clear of the trip-hop conundrum for the most part with Formica Blues. Certainly there was a certain shared sense of cinematic drama and haunting gloom that informs plenty of songs - consider the Get Carter-sampling "Silicone," while "The Outsider" has an emotional directness Beth Gibbons would be proud of. The fact that lead single "Life in Mono" samples Portishead favorite John Barry and works with breakbeats didn't necessarily help Mono stand out more, for instance. But observations that Saint Etienne rather than the Bristol duo makes for a better role model are actually more accurate, and certainly on "Life in Mono" the keyboards and melancholy yet wistful singing of Siobhan de Maré suggests the likes of "Avenue" more than it does "Sour Times"…

CD box set release from Bob Dylan including his eight original albums from "Bob Dylan (1962)" to "John Wesley Harding (1968)." All albums feature the 2010 remastering from each mono master. *Japan edition exclusively features cardboard sleeve (mini LP) manufactured by Japan (size: 13.5 x 13.5cm). It faithfully repricates the original LP artwork with Obi. Limited copies of 5000.

For two decades, MONO have defined and refined a kind of orchestral rock that is as emotional as it is experimental. Their 10 studio albums over those 20 years have established MONO as what Pitchfork described as “one of the most distinctive bands of the 21st Century.” Meanwhile, their live concerts are typically more subdued in instrumentation – and more supercharged in volume and voltage. Rarely is there the opportunity to combine those two experiences. In their 20-year history as a band, MONO have presented no more than a half-dozen live concerts featuring the support of an orchestra. Such events are not only unusual – they are also unforgettable.

MONO formed in Tokyo, Japan in the closing winter weeks of December, 1999. They played their first live shows at the top of the new millennium, and released their first album, Under The Pipal Tree, in 2001. Recorded live in one day on a razor-thin budget, Pipal Tree was an earnest introduction to the curious magic of a band that would eventually become synonymous with monstrously dynamic, contemporary classical rock music.

Pilgrimage of the Soul is the 11th studio album in the 22-year career of Japanese experimental rock legends, MONO. Recorded and mixed – cautiously, anxiously, yet optimistically – during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020, Pilgrimage of the Soul is aptly named as it not only represents the peaks and valleys where MONO are now as they enter their third decade, but also charts their long, steady journey to this time and place. Continuing the subtle but profound creative progression in the MONO canon that began with Nowhere Now Here (2019), Pilgrimage of the Soul is the most dynamic MONO album to date (and that’s saying a lot). But where MONO’s foundation was built on the well-established interplay of whisper quiet and devastatingly loud, Pilgrimage of the Soul crafts its magic with mesmerizing new electronic instrumentation and textures, and – perhaps most notably – faster tempos that are clearly influenced by disco and techno. It all galvanizes as the most unexpected MONO album to date – replete with surprises and as awash in splendor as anything this band has ever done.