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Monos, "Generators"
Few records have the severity of depth that this one carries with it:developing and fluid in its every contour, ever-present, but alwayshiding behind the shape of a shadow. There is no resting point, nosound or simple feeling that these four pieces lean on in order tocarry out their miles-deep melancholy.Die Stadt
As "Sleep" begins there is a suggestion made, a hypnotic motionmeant only to seduce the mind into the belief that Darren Tate andColin Potter are intent on relaxing muscle and slowing brain activityto a crawl. The hum of electronics blows easily until randomsounds—coughing, restlessness, twisting and turning—bolt through thestill waters of the track. Slowly developing melodic themes, almost toodistant to piece together, stretch from their slumber and begin a slowcrawl through the lamp-lit streets that are at the very heart of Generators.This is a dream record through and through. All around is anenvironment of places and the energy they emit: a spider crawling alongits web musically, the unearthly buzz of fluorescent light, a lonefigure standing still beneath it, everything awash with darkundulations, like the movement of the ocean. The slow, deliberate pulseof the album delivers a suffocating atmosphere with a strange sense ofdensity. The sounds slowly congeal, pressed by gravity and necessity,to a mass that is ultimately crushing. As "Slowly Fading" slips awayinto silence, there is a mood left behind that cannot be lifted easily.The whole of the 2nd CD, entitled "The Black Sea," is a radiantbubbling of all that dark material, the introverted dreamscape of the1st CD, made flesh and blood. Printed inside this beautiful gate-foldcase is the word "still." Generators does exhibit a stillness,a strange freeze frame of moments inundated with uncomfortablethoughts, but it achieves this effect with variation as its mantra. Thehowling, moaning, wind-blasted end carries with it a sense of illusionthat has every scene suddenly infused with shock and tense silence. Generatorslives up to its name, conducting a psychological, frozen horror in itsprogression. The simplest image, like that of an orange hanging from atree, becomes loaded and awkward under this album's impression.
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