UNDER THE PIPAL TREE

Mono's debut album is a confident stab at the sort of post-rock sound pioneered by Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor. Unlike early works by those bands, Mono have no truck with shaky production quality or fuzzy found audio pieces to spice up their instrumental post- rock: they simply play away to their heart's content, and what they come up with is more than good enough to justify their faith in their music to hold its own without resorting to any atmospheric tricks (not that Mogwai or Godspeed ever used such tricks to cover for the shortcomings of their own music, but I'd say more than a few of their imitators did).