Track Listing > >
Black Spider / Terrific Speech 2 / Wake Up And Go Berserk / Terrific Speech / 7:25 / Half Time / I Do Have Weapons / Time And A Half / It Would Have Happened Anyway / Black Spider 2
PIAS RECORDINGS / WALL OF SOUND
Following their MR BEAST album from the beginning of the year, here we see the welcome return of Scottish instrumentalists Mogwai with yet more new material. Soundtracking the acclaimed ZIDANE: A 21ST CENTURY PORTRAIT film, here Mogwai are on more restrained form than the previous record.
Opener BLACK SPIDER is Mogwai in tender and restrained mood, the band delivering a haunting piece of music that harks back to their COME ON DIE YOUNG period; desolate guitar work and tender piano chords dancing around each other, the sound of Mogwai at their atmospheric best. TERRIFIC SPEECH 2 marries desolate piano chords to skittery drum patterns whilst on WAKE UP AND GO BERSERK, the band give a masterclass in brooding tension; threatening to unleash torrents of ear shattering noise at any moment, whilst keeping things confined to pretty piano work and the foreboding hum of oppressive guitar feedback.
7:25 is a stark piece that finds subtle bass rumbles underpinning melancholic guitar riffs and the gentle patter of a subdued drum beat; the equally beguiling HALF TIME is another lesson in tender restraint and haunting atmospherics, Mogwai again dealing in stark mood and gorgeous walls of sound.
The closing thirty minute epic BLACK SPIDER 2 is Mogwai at their very finest, the lengthy duration giving the band the time needed to really build the tension and atmospherics needed to showcase their brilliance.
Majestic and sublime, this is the sound of Mogwai back at the height of their powers - a magnificent and beautiful piece of work that finds them at their finest; ZIDANE A 21st CENTURY PORTRAIT is a brooding, yearning and gorgeous record.
BIOGRAPHY
It's a treacherous business, trying to explain Mogwai. Pretension and hyperbole lurk around every punctuation mark. Oceanic torrents of adjectives come easier than words which actually mean something. Confronted with a music that has all the emotional impact of the greatest rock, but few of its obvious signifiers, you're left struggling to make sense of the nebulous, but powerful feelings they provoke.
Either that, or you just rely on their capacity to give excellent quotes. Here's one by Stuart Braithwaite from back in 2001. "We have no relevance," he lamented, observing the way pop music is generally disseminated. "We have no relevance to that one-dimensional view of culture. That is the antithesis of us. Music as a cultural force is a way of life."
Music as a cultural force is a way of life. It's a slogan that has defined this Glasgow band for something like eight years now. In that time, they have made four albums and quite a few more singles, records which manage to combine significant might with unusual subtlety, that articulate certain profound things about the human condition - rage, euphoria, melancholy, a yearning for the transcendent, generally big stuff - with very few audible words. In that time, too, Mogwai have made an incalculable impact on the way we understand the very nature of rock, though they'd probably think such a claim would be far too crass.
Let's try and remember 1995, when Stuart Braithwaite (guitar) and Dominic Aitchison (bass) recruited John Cummings (guitar) and Martin Bulloch (drums) into the band which would soon become Mogwai. Great slabs of instrumental rock were hardly common currency. Post-rock was a technical term used by only a few theorists. Slint were yet to become the kneejerk reference point for any band striving to bend hardcore into solemn, mathematical new shapes, chiefly because there weren't many bands, visibly at least, striving to do that. Radiohead were an indie band with a U2 fetish. '(What's The Story) Morning Glory' was inescapable, or at least seemed to be.
Realistically, four Glaswegian teenagers playing glowering, volatile instrumental rock, with a slowly unravelling dynamic diametrically opposed to the mainstream, weren't the most obvious next sensation. But watching them support the likes of marvellous and obscure hardcore bands like Bob Tilton, there was always a sensation that here, at last, was a band who could channel and focus the discontent and ambition simmering in all the musicians who felt disenfranchised by the Britpop hegemony, who could present this truculent underground music on a grand scale without compromising any of its radical intensity. This, of course, is just what Mogwai did. By 1997, they had flooded the market with singles for a bewildering array of bedroom record labels. They gained matching tattoos, a temporary fifth member in the mischievous shape of Brendan O'Hare, and a reputation for rock'n'roll excess that was both provocative and pleasingly imaginative: the audience at one London show were offered deconstructed amps, as well as guitar shards, as souvenirs during an enjoyably cataclysmic version of 'Mogwai Fear Satan'. The records were good, too. 1997's 'Mogwai Young Team': the bloodied culmination of Mogwai Phase One.
1999's 'Come On Die Young': an eerie, stark beast recorded at an isolated studio in upstate New York and with the assistance of a notable new member, multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns. 2001' s 'Rock Action': lusher, calmer, more vivid and expansive, more words to identify. Increasingly, you were either with Mogwai or against them. All passion and antagonism, their collaborators lined up like a coalition of the willing in the battle against mediocrity: guest players Gruff Rhys, The Remote Viewer, Luke Sutherland and David Pajo; remixers Kevin Shields and Alec Empire; producers Steve Albini and Dave Fridmann; firm allies Arab Strap, Godspeed You Black Emperor! the bill they picked for 2000's All Tomorrow's Parties festival.
Inadvertently, these five punk rock aesthetes and multi-tasking shit-stirrers caused a shift amongst bands and commentators about what rock could be, what rock could do. Mogwai proved to the slower-witted, that rock need not be a constricting doctrine. Instead, it was revealed as a license to explore an infinite library of possibilities, a kind of music, which always benefits from being stretched, challenged, subverted, reinvented. Which brings us, of course, to the new Mogwai album.
The fourth Mogwai album, or the seventh if you count one remix thing ('Kicking A Dead Pig, 1998) and two exceptional singles collections ('Ten Rapid', 1997, and 'EP+6', 2001). This one is called 'Happy Songs For Happy People', a nice name for a summer record whose song titles allude to paranoia, vague threats, the Bible, boundless horrors and '80s hair metal. It sounds, glibly, like a Mogwai album, or at least like a band who have such a confident and accomplished understanding of what they want their music to be that all the old influences and comparisons seem more redundant now than ever before. It also sounds precisely nothing like the prevailing musical fashions of 2003 - which renews Mogwai's outsider gang status, railing against the heathens and in a position of adversity which undoubtedly suits the contrary bastards.
'Happy Songs For Happy People' is compact - just over 40 minutes - and extraordinarily skilful at sucking you in. The big crescendos don't come after long passages of quiet, they grow organically and stealthily. The metal power, the hardcore methodology, the pastoral prettiness are hard to separate any more. Rather, they exist in a state of grace that's moving and inspiring and all those other vague emotions music regularly promises, but rarely delivers.
Mogwai have finished work on their fifth studio album, the follow up to 2003's HAPPY SONGS FOR HAPPY PEOPLE. The record titled MR BEAST was recorded in the bands new Castle Of Doom studio in Glasgow over the summer with producer Tony Doogan and will be released on PIAS Recordings on the 6th March 2006.
As the title might suggest, a large part of MR BEAST finds Mogwai returning to the bone-crushing volume and intensity of earlier recordings, but like all folk-lore's greatest monster stories, this beast has a quieter, more sensitive side, as single FRIEND OF THE NIGHT shows. In the words of manager Alan McGee the album "is probably the greatest art rock record that I've been involved in since My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. It's possibly better than Loveless. It is the record that they have always threatened to make. It is a shockingly good record - fucking masterpiece."
LINE UP
Dominic Aitchison
Stuart Leslie Braithwaite
Martin Bulloch
Barry Burns
John Cummings
DISCOGRAPHY
TEN RAPID (1997>Rock Action)
collected recordings, 1996 - 1997
Summer
New Paths To Helicon, Part 2
Angels Vs Aliens
I Am Not Batman
Tuner
Ithica 27-9
A Place For Parks
New Paths To Helicon, Part 1
End
YOUNG TEAM (1997>Chemikal Underground)
Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home
Like Herod
Katrien
Radar Maker
Tracy
Summer (Priority Version)
With Portfolio
R U Still In To It
A Cheery Wave From Stranded Youngsters
Mogwai Fear Satan
NO EDUCATION=NO FUTURE (FUCK THE CURFEW) EP (1998>Chemikal Underground)
Xmas Steps
Rollerball
Small Children In The Background
MOGWAI FEAR SATAN REMIXES (1998>Eye Q)
Mogwai Remix
U-Ziq Remix
Surgeon Remix
My Bloody Valentine Remix
KICKING A DEAD PIG: MOGWAI SONGS REMIXED (1998>Eye Q/Chemikal Underground)
Like Herod>Hood Remix
Helicon 2>Max Tundra Remix
Summer>Klute's Weird Winter Remix
Gwai On 45>Arab Strap Remix
A Cheery Wave From Stranded Youngsters>Third Eye Foundation Tet Offensive Remix
Like Herod>Alec Empire's Face The Future Remix
Mogwai Fear Satan>Surgeon Remix
R U Still In To It?>DJ Q Remix
Tracy>Kid Loco's Playing With The Young Team Remix
Mogwai Fear Satan>Mogwai Remix
COME ON DIE YOUNG (1999>Chemikal Underground)
Punk Rock
Cody
Helps Both Ways
Year 2000 Non-Compliant Cardia
Kappa
Waltz For Aidan
May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door
Oh! How The Dogs Stack Up
Ex-Cowboy
Chocky
Christmas Steps
Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/ANTICHRISt
STANLEY KUBRICK (1999>Chemikal Underground)
Stanley Kubrick
Christmas Song
Burn Girl Prom Queen
Rage: Man
MY FATHER MY KING (2001>PIAS Recordings)
My Father My King
ROCK ACTION (2001>PIAS Recordings/Southpaw Recordings)
Sine Wave
Take Me Somewhere Nice
O I Sleep
Dial: Revenge
You Don't Know Jesus
Robot Chant
2 Rights Make 1 Wrong
Secret Pint
HAPPY SONGS FOR HAPPY PEOPLE (2003>PIAS Recordings/Matador Records)
Hunted By A Freak
Moses? I Amn't
Kids Will Be Skeletons
Killing All The Flies
Boring Machines Disturbs Sleep
Ratts Of The Capital
Golden Porsche
I Know You Are But What Am I?
Stop Coming To My House
GOVERNMENT COMMISSIONS BBC SESSIONS 1996-2003 (2005>PIAS)
Hunted By A Freak (Peel Live Session)
R U Still In 2 It? (Peel Session)
Helicon 2 (Peel Session)
Kappa (Peel Session)
Cody (Peel Session)
Like Herod (Lamacq)
Secret Pint (Lamacq Session)
Superheroes Of BMX (Peel Session)
Helicon 1 (Lamacq Session)
Stop Coming To My House (Peel Live Session)
MR BEAST (PIAS>2006)
Auto Rock
Glasgow Mega-Snake
Acid Food
Travel Is Dangerous
Team Handed
Friend Of The Night
Emergency Trap
Folk Death 95
I Chose Horses
We're No Here
TRAVEL IS DANGEROUS (PIAS/Rock Action>2006)
Travel Is Dangerous
Auto Rock (Errors Remix)
Friend Of The Night (Acid Casuals Remix)
Like Herod (Live)
We're No Here (Live)
BLACK SPIDER/HALF TIME (PIAS/WoS>2006)
Black Spider
Half Time
ZIDANE A 21st CENTURY PORTRAIT (PIAS/WoS>2006)
Black Spider
Terrific Speech 2
Wake Up And Go Beserk
Terrific Speech
7:25
Half Time
I Do Have Weapons
Time And A Half
It Would Have Happened Anyway
Black Spider 2
LINKS
Mogwai>www.mogwai.co.uk
PIAS Recordings>www.pias.com
Southpaw Recordings>www.southpawrecordings.com
FURTHER LISTENING
Slint>Spiderland (1991>Touch And Go)
Explosions In The Sky (2004>Bella Union)
Boards Of Canada>The Campfire Headphase (2005>Warp)
Review date: November 2006 |
