Epic, mystic and melancholic: Monumental Men produce electronic music with cinematic precision. A captivating mélange where determination and caution, force and tenderness and analog and digital meet.
Bass, choir, strings – every cue perfectly timed. With Monumental Men, however, the conductor is also the director. The music of the Swiss trio immediately triggers a hallucinating range of images evoking atmospheres and worlds normally reserved for the big screen of a movie theatre. The result: a driving journey among weighty, rock-like beats and sounds, contrasted by delicate and distorted vocals, merging into experimental pop music. Monumental sounds, at first glance set in stone only to vanish the very next moment.
Monumental Men’s sound is driven by producers Biru and Melvyn Buss, Dancefloor veterans with Round Table Knights and Mercury, as well as vocalist Roman Bühlmann. Their work sets out to capture the exciting dynamics of club music and to translate it into contemporary pop. To play with arrangement and effect without ever fully exhausting the possibilities. Thus, listeners are regularly captivated by extraordinary twists, gloomily glimpsing into an abyss before suddenly finding themselves on top of a Himalayan peak. Or following the elusive and shifting vocals, in search of love, security and a sense of home.
With support by visual artists Dani Rolli and Ian G.C. White, the oeuvre of Monumental Men does not have to rely on overexposure to establish crystal-clear atmospheres. It opts for a timbre and lets it sink in – a creative direction that has led the way to enthusiastic critical reception both on stages such as Kantine Berghain in Berlin or Zurich Openair as well as on display in museums.
Sometimes it‘s just not easy to remain calm, especially when the past comes back to haunt you. It might just be the hint of a scent, just a split second of that song, a tiny glimpse down that road – what should have been a small flame, now such a fire. Monumental Men‘s latest grapples with the emotional, a bittersweet immersion into the very core of what is both killing you and gives you a reason to live. Cue the choir, the laid-back bass, the vibrant strings and you‘ve got yourself a hopeful little tune, despite it all.
Speaking to the motivation behind Small Flame, Monumental Men share:
‘Small Flame’ is against all odds a love song, basically. Or at least an old man‘s version of a love song – morose, longing but not at all unhappy.
