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Monno: Ghosts
24/04/09 || Khlysty
OK, to clear the room of the wussies: MONNO is a Swiss quartet, who’s moved HQs in Berlin. The band’s comprised of a drummer, a bass player, a guy who claims that he plays “singing laptop” (or, maybe, he sings and “plays” laptop, how the fuck should I know, I don’t speak English, anyway…) and a sax player. From what I’ve gleaned from the Inter-fucking-net, these guys are pretty highly regarded in some free/improv jazz and noise circles and they’re supposed to be big cheese.
“Ghosts” is their third record (the band’s thanking the City Of Lausanne for financial support, ferfucksake!!!) and, this time around, they’re moving inside the murky swampland of doom. The record contains five tracks and lasts almost 45-and-a-half minutes, which means that each song averages a tad above nine minutes. Slow songs. Doom. Played by jazz musicians. Financed by a city in Switzerland. No guitar, whatsoever. But sax. And singing fucking laptop. You catch my drift, right?…
Hmmm, still there, aren’t you? Stubborn bastards. Should’ve left when you still had the time. But, now… Now, it’s too fucking late. Too bloody-fucking-late! The gaping maw that’s MONNO is already open and ready to devour you and everyone else and the WHOLE FUCKING UNIVERSE! A black hole, that’s what this record is: a huge black hole that sucks out life and light and everything even remotely good or happy or… Leaving behind an emptiness so unthinkably vast that it will crush your soul and leave you a husk, drooling nullified.
MONNO is what Sunn 0))) and other drone/doom/noise have been trying to achieve for years: creating a sound that will make its listeners physically uncomfortable, even ill. “Ghosts” is a record that you don’t want to listen to alone at ANY TIME. It attacks at different modes: other times lulling you into a well of black despair, other times (as on “Troye”) by brute force, noisescapes so ugly that will whither your being and percussive pummeling, other times by subverting your sense of time and space (fucking “Mérule” with its staggering drums and almost-recognisable sax bleats)… This record is really insidious and I can think only of Khanate as another band that can do such awful things within the framework of doom (Bohren & Der Club Of Gore is too loungy to be considered as “pure” doom)…
It’s also so fucking brilliant I can’t tell you. The rhythm section kills, doing anything it wants -especially the bass sounds as if Godzilla’s rising from ancient tar. The sax, mangled through guitar amps (and, I suppose, treated with guitar effects), acts the part of the guitar so effectively that I don’t think you’ll miss anything. And the electronics – either upfront, or subtler – add a darker dimension to an already bleak and user-unfriendly environment. Vocals, where they exist, are just tortured screams or deep death-rattle rumblings, coated with the toxic slime of the instruments, buried and scary.
The basic M.O. of the band is the slow-and-low attack of doom. That is, until we reach “Hull”, which is a free-jazz noiseathon, with crazy drumming, trepanning electronic noise, subwoofer-killing low-end and what sounds like strangling -probably the sax. It doesn’t last long, but gives you an idea of the sickness hidden inside the minds of those guys: I suppose this track’s their idea of combining black metal theatrics with improv jazz. Does it work? Dunno, but it sure as hell jarred me with its hateful nastiness.
The record ends with “Endfall” (ha, ha, pun intended), which is a combination of codeine drumming, scary atmospherics, noise and “riffing” from the bass and the sax that crests and falls until the last moments of the song that sound as if disembodied creatures prepare to be lost forever inside the void the music has created. It’s a fitting closer to an incredible record.
MONNO is the quintessential “not for everyone” band. Their music in “Ghosts” is a deconstruction of what even the sickest doom is supposed to be. The ambiance of the record is not just bleak; it’s downright scary. No ray of light – even of the proverbial oncoming train – pierce the darkness of the music. The fact that these guys don’t come from metal background probably explains the fact that this record is so uncompromising: their vision is outside of the metal norm. So, they do whatever they like and here lies the brilliance of “Ghosts”: it’s a doom record that’s so reformist as to become a landmark of the genre.
I don’t think that many will choose to follow Monno’s path. It’s a dark, bitter road that leads to scary places. But, for the few who will immerse themselves in “Ghosts”, doom – and heavy music in general – will never be the same again. But, be forewarned: handle with care and, uh, no responsibility for what happens to you, OK?…
9 dark descents out of 10.
- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Conspiracy Records
- Website: www.soundimplant.com/monno
- Band
- Marc Fantini: drums
- Derek Shirley: bass
- Gilles Aubry: singing laptop
- Antoine Chessex: tenor sax with guitar amps
- Tracklist
- 01. Negative horizon
- 02. Troye
- 03. Mérule
- 04. Hull
- 05. Endfall
