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mike was so enthusiastic for us to see mono at the first unitarian last wednesday that he sprung for the tickets and drove. pat and i bought the earplugs and i’ve never more grateful to myself for thinking ahead of time. we got there just in time to catch world’s end girlfriend and it was so loud that the water in my bottle was shaking like jurassic park and i could feel air being pushed up my pant legs. WEG is the brainchild of katsuhiko maeda but i couldn’t tell you if he was playing solo or not because he was set up on the floor (show peeve #1 for the night) and could only make out his head from time to time. there were string arrangements and classical guitar mixed with soundbites from japanese films, electronic noise and breakbeats so intestine-quaking that i wondered if maeda wasn’t going to hit the brown note. someone yelled out “more man, less machine” so i suppose a lot of it was pre-recorded but whatever; the second half of the set was pretty engaging.

although we moved up to the front for mono, i was stuck behind a guy that was seriously like 6′3″ (show peeve #2) and ahead of him to the right was this guy with a huge jewfro that obscured taka goto for the majority of the night (show peeve #3). their set provided a great introduction for non-fans like myself. i know explosions in the sky comparisons abound for this band but i found myself drawing a lot more similarities to come on die young/six songs-era mogwai and that’s far from a bad thing. between the 8 minute, slow-building / huge climax songs were goto & yoda by themselves (although one song had the bass player on keys), playing these unbelievably pretty, intricate guitar pieces.

they played for about 70-80 minutes, with no banter, no breaks and the crowd was hushed and reverent. there were a few times where i had my eyes closed, just listening to the music, and then had the crap scared out of me when the full band would crash in. mono plays wincingly loud with a physicality that is impressive to experience.