Montano is a duo of Michael Upton (Jet Jaguar) and Shanan Holm (Octif). These two New Zealanders have been releasing music together for fifteen years now. In the early 2000s they both found themselves in Melbourne, Australia, and began a collaboration based on field recordings of the city. Field recordings were chopped up and processed to form what sounded like drum machines, synths and samples, with only one recording used per track. The results were released as their first album in 2005. New Zealand journalist Grant Smithies included this album in Soundtracks, his book of essential New Zealand music. Michael moved further abroad to Japan and Shanan back to New Zealand. When they were next back in the same country they began writing again, resulting in 2012's Subtitled. On this release they incorporated more traditional instruments and sounds, sometimes as radical reworks of tracks from the first album. Beats also took a back seat as things got more ambient. New Zealand journalist Martyn Pepperell named Subtitled his favourite local album of that year. Subtitled was accompanied by remixes from artists such as Tim Koch, Mugwood, and Karnan Saba. In 2018 Montano became active again, and in 2020 they have begun releasing new music, in the form of long ambient tracks where the field recordings now mostly sit and are allowed to evolve, while a mix of cheap hardware and fancy software instruments wander by. Mamonaku is the first of the 2020 releases.