Description
Collaborations are always exciting stuff, especially in the heavier and more esoteric realms of music where they’re still a rare occurrence. Often, we see both participants in these endeavors tweak their usual approaches to create a new sound that neither party can fully lay claim to: it exists only in the interdependent product sense. This week, a fleeting occurrence of such a hybridization hits the physical realm: Japanese instrumental rock pioneers MONO and the enigmatic solo artist A.A. Williams release their collaborative Exit in Darkness EP on 10″ vinyl tomorrow.
The Exit in Darkness EP is the result of less than a year’s gestation: following a chance discovery of A.A. Williams at her Roadburn set last April, the EP was recorded in London after MONO’s summer tour with a digital release falling in December. That’s a quick turnaround, but the two tracks included fully realize the creative potency of the partnership. Instrumental post-rock often shines from its devotion to its conventions, but the intensely evocative vocals added here don’t feel like a distraction from anything. Instead, they develop the themes of the underlying music in parallel, commanding equal attention without diverting any from everything else going on.
