Worlds End Girlfriend and MONO - Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain 12 September 2006
This is the same album as from #244797 but mine is a different, lossy rip. I’ve been listening to it lately and felt like it was worth re-sharing.Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain is an uncharateristic Japanese album. To be more accurate, it is an interesting song, which happens to run for a full seventy-four minutes across five tracks—no titles, only numbered tracks. The album is a collaboration between World’s End Girlfriend Katsuhiko Maeda and MONO a four-member band. Both focus on instrumental music, with occasional vocals here and there; but those vocals are always either a brief chorus e.g. near the middle of this album or they’re samples from various sources e.g. ‘Give My Shadow, Put On My Crown’ from The Lie Lay Land by World’s End Girlfriend. MONO places more emphasis on instrumental rock while World’s End Girlfriend is more ambient and electronic, and at times chaotic in structure.Both artists play to their instrumental strengths on Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain, but the result is an album with an atypical atmosphere for either. The song, by which I mean the entire CD, is a slowly measured orchestral performance, replete with recurring motifs and a classical crescendo the develops over the initial forty-five minutes or so. In my experience, it is rare to hear an album with such a measured, unhurried structer. And on top of that, I cannot name another Japanese album which directs all of its efforts into a single, uninterrupted composition. This alone makes Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain a peculiar piece of work. But it’s one that I believe some people will like, assuming they listen to the album as a whole from beginning to end, since skiping any track undermines the entire foundation.It’s a strange album. But I enjoy it a lot and hope you will as well!Note: Every other album by World’s End Girlfriend is available via #495575 but keep in mind Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refain is not representative of the artist’s other music.