Since the release of 2004's Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined, Japan's Mono have hollowed their own cave in the mountain of post-rock. They've incorporated everything from live electronics to orchestral strings and choirs while their harmonic, textural, and timbral palettes have become increasingly more melodic and thematic. On the two simultaneously released albums The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness, Mono offer starkly contrasting aspects of their musical identity. The Last Dawn is the more familiar-sounding of the pair. As its title suggests, this is an ending, a summation, in executing it as such, the band pursues a much simpler melodic context than on 2013's For My Parents. The slow-building tension and release over the set's six tracks portray the quality of light brilliant, golden, soft, warm but also contain its oncoming nadir.