Mono: Transcendental EP LTD | CLR version on vinyl LP in 45 RPM limited colored edition. This particular edition was published in Europe in publishing company Pelagic Records on 28. June 2024.

Product information Two bands from very different cultural backgrounds, from Japan and Germany... yet spiritually related and united by many similarities: a cinematic approach to music based on long, escalating pieces... the fact that both bands have been around for more than 15 years and have released several albums since their inception; that they have toured the world many times and visited unexplored territories such as Siberia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia and South America; and finally their shared passion for double albums such as "Heliocentric", "Anthropocentric" by THE OCEAN and "The Last Dawn"/"Rays Of Darkness" by MONO. It's only logical that the two bands will now tour together - and just in time for an extended European tour, they'll release new music in the form of a split LP. Two tracks, just one from each band - but a total of 24 minutes of new music. THE OCEAN's contribution, a 13-minute track called The Quiet Observer, was inspired by Gaspard Noe's controversial film Enter The Void. The film tells the story of a drug dealer who, while on a trip with DMT, shoots himself in a Tokyo toilet and enters a state referred to as "intermediate state" according to the Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead: This book, which has been a source of inspiration for many writers, artists and musicians from John Lennon to Aldous Huxley, describes the state immediately after a person's death, when the intellect of the dead must confront its own illusions in the form of peaceful and angry deities, in a protracted psychedelic experience. Only if he manages to unmask these terrifying images as figments of his own imagination can he escape the eternal cycle of rebirth and eventually enter nirvana. MONO, who have been touring relentlessly since the release of the double album The Last Dawn / Rays Of Darkness in 2014, address similar themes in their contribution, the eleven-minute track Death in Reverse. The song serves as a teaser for MONO's forthcoming ninth album, which is scheduled for release in early 2016 via Pelagic Records. Guitarist and main songwriter Takaakira Goto comments, "The theme of this song is life and death and regeneration. Even as our bodies decay and decompose, our souls endure unchanged. Our bodies will function as seeds for the next generation, while our souls will journey together into a new eternal life. This is the story we want to explore with our next album, a depiction of our journey through life to death; from living our lives proudly and nobly, through bodies that decay, filled with precious memories... and through the vast, noisy tunnel of the universe we become pure souls - a single drop of water in the fountain of life." The German artist Florian Bertmer, who lives in Los Angeles, was commissioned to transform these motifs into the cover art.

Album spans genres Post Rock and Post-Metal. Repress 2020 & Oxblood Pink Galaxy Vinyl.