Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain in Bloomington, MN

What the hell? In April 2006,
Mono
released their
instrumental
opus
You Are There
on
Temporary Residence
and they toured the world in support of it. In September of the same year
Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain
is issued as a collaborative album with
World's End Girlfriend
(aka
Katsushiko Maeda
), the underground Japanese producer, mixologist, and multi-instrumentalist. Helping out with this slab are a string section, a chorus, a pianist, and
jazz
saxophonist
Takafumi Ishikawa
. This is, it appears, one long set with each "movement" or division in it marked with the titles
"Trailer 1,"
"Trailer 2,"
"Trailer 3,"
and so on. It begins innocently enough with an elegy played by the string section, shifting slowly, purposefully in dirge mode. The guitars begin to enter at seven-and-a-half minutes into the 12-minute opener. The chorus enters in
"Trailer 2"
with the guitars barely present, but adding just enough tension that the listener knows something is about to happen. Tension is built so slowly as to almost be imperceptible. On
begins to play as a trio, with drums weaving through the strings, which become more insistent until
WEG
and
set the noise to stun about halfway through its 13-plus minutes. Chorus, piano, and silence add dimension to the strings on
"Trailer 4,"
begins their swell, burn and release on the final trailer, slipping around the background, creating a taut sonic backdrop until the entire thing just explodes as a mournful, gorgeous, funereal
hymn
that eventually enters back into silence.
Palmless Prayer
reveals an entirely different side of this band, who nonetheless keep their individual identity adding depth and dimension to their sound. This isn't
classical
music, but it's not
rock
, either. It's something else entirely, which apparently folds into the multivalent calling card
have attempted to establish since they began. It's puzzling, bewildering and utterly beautiful. ~ Thom Jurek