For Takaakira “Taka” Goto and Mono, his instrumental post-rock outfit, the March 11 earthquake eventually inspired For My Parents, the band’s sixth and arguably most-emotionally charged full-length album. Though capturing the sense of panic and fragility wasn’t easy, Goto was determined. And as he tells it, there was more than enough spiritual energy being transferred throughout Japan at the time of writing For My Parents that Goto was able to serve his purpose well.
“The earthquake and tsunami in Japan unexpectedly stirred up emotions about our homeland and families,” writes the guitarist in an email. “It made us think about how fleeting, and sometimes fragile, moments can be,” he continues, before nothing that For My Parents was “…inspired by all the energy circulating around at that time.”
The way Goto tells it, you’d think For My Parents in all its sweeping glory was part of the healing process for him. And while that may be true, the healing didn’t come easy. First, as his country recuperated from one of the most devastating natural disasters in recent memory, Goto had to come to a stark realisation: death is an inevitability.
This kind of realisation was likely rampant throughout Japan. But in coming face-to-face with a jarring reality, Goto and Mono were eventually able to find solace in their work. Full of incredible builds and layered walls of sound, working on For My Parents offered solace to Goto. Questions soon gave way to answers.
“For My Parents came from the understanding that we all eventually lose the ones that made us. It’s the way of nature,” he states rather defiantly. “How do you stand by the one that created you?” he continues. “How do you stand next to your home, the place that created you?”
So moving has the evolution of Mono been that, indeed at times, it’s hard to trace their lineage back to the band they were on Under The Pipal Tree, their debut. But Goto and Mono knew it was imperative for them to accurately understand the people they are and the musicians they’ve become if they were to properly express such vital emotions.
“For this album, we went back to our roots. It’s something that we wanted to do while we still had the chance,” he says. Though Goto alludes to changes forthcoming in Mono’s deeply entrenched aesthetic, he later insists that any changes that may occur will certainly happen organically. It’s easy to forget that, despite the band having released six full-length albums, Under The Pipal Tree is only 11 years old itself.
Mono is essentially in a constant state of transition, says Goto. Even so, it took quite some time for the band to understand their sound themselves.
“I think we are still learning, still discovering new things about our sound everyday. The point when we started to have a clearer vision began with You Are There and Hymn to the Immortal Wind. By then we’d grown more confident as a quartet and understood the energy behind our songs.
“We just try to translate our own personal experiences and emotions into sound,” continues Goto in earnest. “I think the root of each song and album has to come from an honest place. We are exposed to so many forms of art and music all around us, so the only way to give our music a unique life of its own is to become storytellers of our own journey.”
As such, the best way for Mono to compose their songs is to take those very songs on a journey themselves, composing each one delicately and with great care. It’s obvious through their textured tracks that the band leave no stone unturned and maintain a great degree of care in composition.
“I think we compose our songs similar to building a large structure using many bricks, one at a time. Imagine our body – each organ has its own purpose and connects perfectly with the other,” he muses. “I think it’s the same with music. We have to be scientists of music if we want to share emotion with someone.”
As anyone in attendance at their 2011 performance at the Melbourne Festival (in which their often ten-minute tracks were given new weight with a full orchestra) will attest, emotion is never in short supply with Mono, regardless of the venue. Now ready to share For My Parents with Australia, Mono consider themselves a band more aware of the world around them.
“As long as we have a space where people can concentrate on the show, then we are happy,” says Goto of where the band have enjoyed performing For My Parents. “We enjoy playing large venues, churches, and tiny venues. It’s a beautiful experience to play our music on different continents and feel no disconnect between us and the audience. This is the universal language of music.”
BY JOSHUA KLOKE
