A great weapon in a musician’s arsenal is the tasteful use of crescendo. But what happens when a whole song behaves like this? When the composition grows and grows in intensity for its entirety and it becomes more than you can bear? Well then you might have something from the likes of Brooklyn quartet Monograms. Their new single, “Sleep Cycle,” is a self-sustaining weather system, feeding on its own sonic momentum throughout its duration. What starts as a singular guitar, trebly and hollow in its forceful downstrokes, results in a swirling wave of tonal power, the full band utilizing big room and bigger effect to make you feel like an unassuming speck in an unruly ocean.
A rather lonely and agitated outset is filled out by searing guitar leads and throbbing drums and the room in which you’re sitting gets a heck of a lot darker. Y’know the scene, a room completely bathed in shadow, with that one lightbulb dangling ominously by its cord, like in every thriller ever, until it starts to sway and illuminate the dust particles and make you feel more alone and dizzy your senses, and then it’s too late. By the time the full force of band and vocals smack you in the face in that slowmotion fast food advertisement kind of way, you’re already drowning, overwhelmed, gasping for air. Tones on tones pile on and the track swirls and hurls and gets bigger and you’re plunged into the speeding hurricane mass, only gaining strength as you approach the wall of sound that is its landfall.
Monograms play a release show TONIGHT at Elsewhere (Zone One), with Journalism and Obliques.
