Best of Budapest & Hungary

The Japanese post-rock band celebrated their 25th birthday last year and released their latest album OATH, which will be presented in Europe this autumn as part of a 29-stop tour. Fortunately, MONO will not miss Budapest on the tour, so you can listen to their ethereal tunes live at Turbina on 24 November.

    MONO's new album OATH focuses on the time that life takes and how to make the most of it. The band has always been keen to explore questions about existence, what we are meant to do and what we should do with the time we have. Over the past 25 years, MONO has explored themes such as the relationship between darkness and light, hope in the face of disaster, and the duality of birth and death. Recorded and mixed with the formation's long-time friend and collaborator Steve Albini, OATH offers a benign contemplation in response to MONO's universally felt existential inquiry.

    MONO was founded in Tokyo in 1999. With their unique musical solutions, they have pushed the rock genre into the background and created their own musical realm, where instrumental music is influenced by shoegaze guitar noise, post-rock and classical music. The British NME once referred to their songs as the music of the gods. It's no wonder that they have been credited with scores for a number of films and TV series, having been nominated for the Ariel Award for Best Original Score, and winning the Marshall Hawkins Awards for Where We Begin. They were also responsible for the melodies of the film All God's Children Can Dance by Haruki Murakami.

    Their music has never been confined to a single genre, but rather a set of moods, and their euphoric and dynamic performance style makes them one of the best concert bands around. MONO's 10th anniversary concert series was testament to this, where they joined classical orchestras on stage in cities such as New York, Tokyo, London and Melbourne. Their New York concert can be heard on their live album Holy Ground, while their Tokyo performance also featured a collaboration with NHK Symphony Orchestra master Fuminori Shinozaki.

    In 2018, MONO was invited to headline the Meltdown Festival in London at the request of curator Robert Smith (The Cure). They shared the stage with artists they look up to as inspirations such as My Bloody Valentine, Nince Inch Nails, Mogwai and Deftones.

    To mark their 20th anniversary in 2020, they released their 10th album, Nowhere Now Here, which they celebrated with a special four-stop classical music series. One of these concerts was held at the Barbican Hall in London in front of 2,000 people. The album Beyond the Past, which was recorded during the performance, came second on Billboard's classical crossover chart. MONO began work on their 11th album, recorded with Steve Albini, in the middle of the epidemic. Pilgrimage of the Soul , which charted at #85 on Billboard’s General Album Sales in the US for the first time, and also charted #2 on Alternative New Artist Albums.

    In 2024, they celebrated their 25th anniversary with the release of OATH, which we can hear live at Turbina on 24 November.

    Tickets for the concert will first be available to registered Live Nation members from 11am on 20 March, while general ticket sales starts at 11am on 21 March.