Takaakira "Taka" Goto is a composer based in Tokyo, Japan, who is also known as the lead guitarist and composer for Japanese instrumental rock band MONO. MONO was originally formed in 1999 and has released a total of 9 albums since, including a live album of a performance with the New York Symphony Orchestra. Their intense and dynamic live performances have stunned audiences across the globe, from North America to Europe, Asia and Oceania, and the band continues to expand their loyal following every year. After 16 years of leading MONO, Taka feels it is now the right time to start his solo career. His debut album "Classical Punk and Echoes Under the Beauty" was originally written and recorded in 2003, but never finished or released at the time. "I wasn't actually thinking about sharing this album with anyone at the time. It didn't sound like MONO, so I left it as a trail to my envisioned world, as my personal collection", Taka explains. The tracks sank into oblivion as Taka focused on MONO... and now, in 2015, they appear like a melancholic relict of the past, the early days of MONO, and a reminder how time flies and how old we've all become... a relict much too precious and too authentic to be polished up or re-recorded - and hence, Taka decided to simply master these tracks, and to release them as they were, in their raw, slightly shopworn beauty. Taka's approach to music is undoubtedly original. Much like the album title insinuates, his music carries the dignity and grandeur of classical music, with its big orchestrations of piano and strings... yet at the same time, there is the rawness and the high-energy impact of punk rock, with wails of electric guitars and shrouds of noise. There is also a strong filmscore feel to all of his work - and Taka is, of course, no newby to the world of soundtracks. He took part in scoring such films as Snow Angels (2007 / Director: David Gordon Green), Kami No Kodomotachi Wa Mina Odoru / All God's Children Can Dance (2010 / Writer: Haruki Murakami; Director: Robert Logevall) and the WOWOW TV Drama Kanata No Ko (2013 / Director: Tatsushi Omori). MONO have collaborated with the legendary Japanese animator Koji Morimoto (Akira, The Animatrix) for a video trailer, and have recently contributed the soundtrack to the short film Where We Begin, which was named after a MONO song. The song was also used in a video blog featuring Japanese mountaineer, Nobukazu Kurik, while he attempted to climb Broad Peak mountain on the Pakistan/China border. 'Classical Punk and Echoes Under the Beauty' was also strongly inspired by Danish film producer Lars von Trier, and especially by his movie 'Breaking the Waves' from 1996. ,That film took my heart away", says Taka. ,He focused on death in order to show the beauty of life, and I instantly felt like I wanted to express that with my music. I wanted to focus on a woman as a theme as well, like Lars does with his films. And in order to express the courage, insanity, sensuality, sadness, kindness and emptiness in the relationships between women and men, I could only hear the sounds with classical instruments like violins, violas and cellos in my head." Taka's vision for his solo career and future compositions is ambitious, and he has plans to be involved in more cinematic arts from movies to TV shows.