Mono Watt – words + noise (13th Floor Album Review)
Mono Watt is a trio comprising James Littlewood, Ross Cunningham and John Pain, collectively encompassing the arts in their visual, aural and written forms.
Formed in January this year, they have created and crafted an album of eleven poetic escapades and reflective narratives.
words + noise was recorded live over three days, using words spoken and sung by Littlewood, electric guitar noise courtesy of Cunningham, and electronics manipulated by Pain. True to its eleven titles, there are words and music here, but never songs in the conventional sense. This is poetry and spoken word, gestated upon soundbeds and soundscapes — a modernist approach to ancient modes of expression.
The lineage is clear. This approach was pioneered by the Beat poets — Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac — in the 1950s and ’60s, revived by punks such as Patrick Fitzgerald, John Cooper Clarke and Henry Rollins in the ’70s and ’80s, and carried forward into later incarnations — think Rage Against the Machine’s Hadda Be Playin’ on the Jukebox.
With their use of electronics — perhaps a hat tip to the impact of industrial music — Mono Watt place strength and confidence in their words. These are cohesively constructed and responsively relevant to the Aotearoa experience, replete with the voices and vocabularies of our many communities. While the soundbeds never agitate to extremes, they consistently provoke emotional responses, elevating the text even during raucous moments such as Small x Mass. The album’s production — engineered by Pain — is immaculate, maintaining balance throughout.
Simon Coffey
words + noise is out now.
