Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain

Just before recording their epic disasterpiece You Are There, MONO began collaborating with fellow Tokyo native and modern electronic composer world’s end girlfriend. The result is a five-part sojourn of neoclassical grace and luminescence that defies lazy categorization. As dark as the bottom of the ocean, and nearly as otherworldly, Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain finds MONO inhabiting an illuminated world previously only hinted at in their most orchestral compositions. Recorded in multiple studios in Japan last year, Palmless Prayer joins MONO’s increasing obsession with classical music with world’s end girlfriend’s mastery of subtle dynamic shifts. Forgoing their tendency to erupt into hellish bursts of speaker-destroying noise, MONO instead exhibits remarkable restraint, stretching song lengths past the 15-minute mark and turning barely-there crescendoes into earth-shaking events. Less an epiphany and more a reminder of the beauty that already exists all around us, Palmless Prayer is a miniature panoramic view of the sea on an eerily still day, the current swaying at an impossibly lazy pace and the sound of a thousand tiny waves crashing all at once.