Chicago-based band Monoculture is formed from a ten-year musical partnership. Founding members Faayani Aboma Mijana and Nick Leibold come together to bring blends of psych and jazz to their sound, incorporating more expansive arrangements and broader instrumental palettes since their move to the city in 2019. Supporting the likes of Brian Jonestown Massacre and Mild High Club, and headlining across the USA they’ve built a dedicated fanbase.
In their new visual commentary ‘Beyond Material’, an eight-minute short film that draws parallels between the modern day and times we pretend to be past, Monoculture presents three singles. The aptly named first track ‘Open’, provides a short overture for what’s to come sonically, introducing our instrumental selection, and the emotion within the arrangement.
‘I’ll Do You One Better’ returns in a new context, recently released as a single, its bouncy, optimistic feel truly hitting its mark as a facetious stab at pop song structure. The jazz and psych influences make for an unsettled feeling, a change of the guard for normalisation, matching the visual storytelling with ease.
‘Beyond Material’, the title track, helps listeners explore this new world, breaking free from the societal structure and protesting against the return of the old world. A firmer structure, as well as new synth instrumentation, crosses the final bridge of sonics and visuals. The film is perfectly intertwined from start to finish.
“The film is about workers who experience the workplace as a new plantation. The commentary here is that, under our current system, we ostensibly have freedom, but in actuality, we are wage slaves who must work to survive. Even then, living is often meager, even if the work is hard. I call the film ‘Beyond Material’ because I recognize that the fight for a better world is more than just a material struggle, there’s also an ideological component to that struggle, and this film humbly joins that struggle.”
