Mistletone

Fri 7 Oct: Wintercoats supporting Mono @ Forum Theatre. Tickets $35 from Ticketmaster 1300 723 038. Over 18s event only.

Japanese post-rock legends Mono make their eagerly awaited return to Australia, this time joining their singular blend of arcing guitar and surging drums with the majesty of a full orchestra in order to reprise their otherworldly Holy Ground performance.

An instrumental rock onslaught with tracks that often stretch well beyond the ten minute mark, Mono’s music plays out as a sequence of symphonically choreographed exercises in emotional decompression and vast aural spectacle, journeying from moments of haunting quietude to emotionally charged climaxes of feedback, percussion and prodigious guitar work.

To see Mono perform is to be transported and overwhelmed, lost in the spell of a band standing at the precipice of the tragic and the sublime.

Mono are joined by Melbourne multiinstrumentalist and recent Mistletone signing James Wallace, AKA Wintercoats. As the name suggests, Wallace trades in a gauzy brand of wintry intimacy – ethereal fragments of orchestral pop that seem to channel the muted palette of dreamed snowscapes.

Armed with violin, piano, glockenspiel, guitar, his enveloping voice and an overworked loop pedal, Wallace makes music that is simple but cocooning, a gentle fire set against the creeping cold.

“Screw ‘Music For The People’, this is music for the gods.” – NME