FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Sweeney
as Mogwai released their tenth studio album, As the Love Continues, last month. It was another terrific release from the Scottish band. Go and buy the album as it is really terrific. Just before moving on, here is some Mogwai information:
“Mogwai (/ˈmɒɡwaɪ/) are a Scottish post-rock band, formed in 1995 in Glasgow. The band consists of Stuart Braithwaite (guitar, vocals), Barry Burns (guitar, piano, synthesizer, vocals), Dominic Aitchison (bass guitar), and Martin Bulloch (drums). Mogwai typically compose lengthy guitar-based instrumental pieces that feature dynamic contrast, melodic bass guitar lines, and heavy use of distortion and effects.
The band were for several years signed to Glasgow label Chemikal Underground, and have been distributed by different labels such as Matador in the US and Play It Again Sam in the UK, but now use their own label Rock Action Records in the UK, and Temporary Residence Ltd. in North America. Mogwai were championed by John Peel from their early days, and recorded seven Peel Sessions between 1996 and 2004 Peel also recorded a brief introduction for the compilation Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996–2003”.
If you are new and need a bit of a guide to the Scottish band, I have recommended their essential albums, an underrated one that people should check out, plus their new studio album (as I cannot find a book about Mogwai, I have had to leave this usual section out). Here is a feature that suggests the best work of…
A legendary group.
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The Four Essential Albums
Mogwai Young Team
Release Date: 21st October, 1997
Label: Chemikal Underground
Producers: Paul Savage/Andy Miller
Standout Tracks: Like Herod/Tracy/Mogwai Fear Station
Buy: https://mogwai.bandcamp.com/album/young-team-deluxe-edition-digital-album
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3sHB5AiFaJEOCAqh3taqGX?si=gv1p6y3zQciBRrGO-tM31Q
Review:
“Young Team, Mogwai's first full-length album fulfills the promise of their early singles and EPs, offering a complex, intertwining set of crawling instrumentals, shimmering soundscapes, and shards of noise. Picking up where Ten Rapid left off, Mogwai use the sheer length of an album to their advantage, recording a series of songs that meld together -- it's easy to forget where one song begins and the other ends. The record itself takes its time to begin, as the sound of chiming processed guitars and murmured sampled vocals floats to the surface. Throughout the album, the sound of the band keeps shifting, and it's not just through explosions of noise -- Mogwai isn't merely jamming, they have a planned vision, subtly texturing their music with small, telling details. When the epic "Mogwai Fears Satan" draws the album to a close, it becomes clear that the band has expanded the horizons of post-rock, creating a record of sonic invention and emotional force that sounds unlike anything their guitar-based contemporaries have created” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Yes! I Am a Long Way from Home
Come On Die Young
Release Date: 29th March, 1999
Labels: Chemikal Underground/Matador
Producer: Dave Fridmann
Standout Tracks: Punk Rock:/Kappa/Christmas Steps
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/mogwai/come-on-die-young-eeb8bff5-98c5-4d58-9a54-8f866ac78fd6
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/2ge6eVAMFNWS5srqDbudEq?si=bE2_JbUJQ8uXg4_Per9uGw
Review:
“So much instrumental rock music is often described as “soundtracks to movies that don’t exist,” but Come On Die Young always felt like the unofficial score to a film that did. Four months after the album was released, The Blair Witch Project hit theaters, and my memories of each tend to blur into one: there’s the shared desolate woodlands setting (the album was recorded at Dave Fridmann’s Tarbox Road Studios in Upstate New York) and chilly, frosty-breath atmosphere (thanks to Fridmann’s uncharacteristically stark, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-Albini production), never mind the fact that Come On Die Young’s eerie cover shot of bassist Dominic Aitchison could easily pass for a still from the film. And most tellingly, like Blair Witch, Come On Die Young moves at a slow, subtle, incremental pace that can test one’s patience and make one long for the high-voltage immediacy of Young Team, but oh-so gradually ratchets up the tension. The heart-palpitating payoff finally arrives in the form of late-album colossi “Ex-Cowboy” and “Christmas Steps”, which once again see Mogwai charting new extremes of effects-pedal abuse, but without overwhelming the songs’ expertly chiseled definition.
That sense of discipline is all the more apparent when wading through the bounty of bonus material on this deluxe edition. While none of the demos here differ dramatically from their finished versions, you get a clearer picture of just how much studious fine-tuning went into the final tracklist: in its original form, “Christmas Steps” was a couple of minutes shorter, before the band wisely decided to stretch out its nerve-wracking build-up even longer; a rough-sketch version of “Punk Rock:” suggests even this seemingly simple composition underwent a few passes before achieving the right spectral ambience. (“Hugh Dallas”, meanwhile, would have been a keeper on any other Mogwai release, but its breathy Braithwaite vocal and elegiac sway drift a bit too closely to “Cody”.) – Pitchfork
Choice Cut: Cody
Happy Songs for Happy People
Release Date: 17th June, 2003
Labels: Play It Again Sam/Matador
Producers: Tony Doogan/Mogwai
Standout Tracks: Hunted by a Freak/Kids Will Be Skeletons/Stop Coming to My House
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/mogwai/happy-songs-for-happy-people
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1k2uLH7mwB72zbepvM8rR4?si=OnwPfZQxQNW5ZpuS4Z4UAg
Review:
“So, is this fourth LP really the sound of the Scottish sound-sculptors going soft on us? Hardly. 'Happy...' is filled with paranoid song titles and a defiant refusal to compromise artistically. It tweaks the hushed blueprint of 2001's 'Rock Action' LP and the result is their most intriguing, beautiful and dazzling record to date.
'Kids Will Be Skeletons' is a good indication of where their post-rockin' heads are at. Melodies weave around a brewing fuzz-storm whilst chords collide and the whole thing slips in and out of consciousness like Slint having a rather nice wet dream. Elsewhere, 'Hunted By A Freak' and 'Killing All The Flies' weld lush electronic passages onto spiraling guitars whereas 'I Know You Are But What Am I?' sees digital beats cascading around lonely piano stabs.
It's often complex, but this isn't over-studied music that appeals only to people with a PhD in Beards. Mogwai aren't the sort of band to harp on about how they achieved a neat atonal effect by restringing their guitars with Jim O'Rourke's pubic hair. In fact, their melodies are often as simple as nursery rhymes because this what works best emotionally. Even when they do rock out and bully the FX pedal marked 'JesusChristThatHurts', the sonic peaks are woven into the fabric of the music rather than left to leap out at you.
By the time 'Stop Coming To My House' erupts, like Sigur Ros being buried beneath their own iceberg, you realise that Mogwai are special. They have that ability to experiment wilfully, yet still appeal to an audience beyond three beret-wearing twats down in Hoxton. Most importantly, they're still striving to recreate the beautiful sounds that bounce around their brains. And until they really do mellow out and release their 'Blur: Aren't Actually That Bad After All' clothing range, we're in for an increasingly thrilling ride” – NME
Choice Cut: Ratts of the Capital
Every Country's Sun
Release Date: 1st September, 2017
Label: Rock Action
Producer: Dave Fridmann
Standout Tracks: Party in the Dark/Crossing the Road Material/Every Country's Sun
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/mogwai/every-country-s-sun
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1cdL73aldXp2CEpdKXUcqP?si=cxECFf-gTlSR3NIgn0gJ8w
Review:
“New bands make great music in their third decade together, but continues the particularly strong form they’ve been in since 2013’s on their ninth studio album, Every Country’s Sun. It’s built, as ever, on the Scots’ familiar instrumental tropes. Sometimes the album is pensive or disturbing. Elsewhere, it’s hymnal and graceful (Coolverine), or brutal (1,000 Foot Face). It’s not so much as quiet-then-loud as the sound of transcendental near-silence gradually erupting into a sonic nuclear meltdown . However, their signature sound is constantly and slightly evolving, as they curate their canon-like sculptors, for ever chipping away to perfect the smallest detail. Synthesiser rhythms mingle with the trademark guitars. , the most outright pop song of Mogwai’s career, features rarely heard vocals: the song blasts a New Order-like bassline through a psychedelic haze to reach a euphoric chorus (“Hungry for a peace of mind …”). As ever, it’s music that seeks to somehow navigate a pathway through life’s eternal chaos” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: Coolverine
The Underrated Gem
Mr. Beast
Release Date: 6th March, 2006
Labels: Play It Again Sam/Matador
Producers: Tony Doogan/Mogwai
Standout Tracks: Travel Is Dangerous/Friend of the Night/We’re No Here
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/mogwai/mr-beast
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/12lwDzvs23w1e8EKa5zQoC?si=07udSY8NT1K-RSHrR_jO0A
Review:
“Possibly the most accessible yet sophisticated album Mogwai has released, Mr. Beast strips away most of the electronic embellishment of their recent work in favor of a back-to-basics sound that returns to and expands on the approach they pioneered on Young Team. Mr. Beast is also a surprisingly spontaneous-sounding album -- in the best possible sense, its freshness makes it feel like a recorded practice session and also helps give relatively delicate pieces like "Team Handed" the same amount of impact that heavy, searing tracks like the closer, "We're No Here," have. Interestingly, more of Mr. Beast tends toward the former kind of song than the latter; "Friend of the Night," "Emergency Trap," and the glorious, slow-burning album opener, "Auto-Rock," give the album an unusually refined, even elegant feel that is underscored by the prominent use of piano and lap steel in the arrangements. On songs like "Acid Food" and the magnificent "I Chose Horses" -- which features cavernously deep bass and spoken word vocals by Tetsuya Fukagawa from the Japanese hardcore band Envy -- Mr. Beast feels downright pastoral. However, Mogwai doesn't give up their heavy side entirely, as the aforementioned "We're No Here" and "Glasgow Mega-Snake" show; any song that has either "mega" or "snake" in the title should rock, and this one does, kicking off with a claustrophobic snarl of guitars that makes this one of the most intense pieces Mogwai has ever recorded. Mr. Beast manages to be immediate without sounding dumbed-down” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Glasgow Mega-Snake
The Latest Album
As the Love Continues
Release Date: 19th February, 2021
Labels: Rock Action/Temporary Residence Limited
Producer: Dave Fridmann
Standout Tracks: To the Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth/Dry Fantasy/Fuck Off Money
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/mogwai/as-the-love-continues
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7a6DbfLdir3tz1U8xmCzaM?si=tLvrdt8ISt-lM8pNTVjsSQ
Review:
“Mogwai are a busy band. Many acts nearing the end of their third decade would be forgiven for slowing their pace, for being selective in their output, and even for running out of ideas. Not Mogwai. This will be their fourth studio album in the last 10 years - a decade which has also seen them release three EPs, two live albums, a lovingly compiled six LP best-of, one remix album, and five original scores - albums which themselves have been critically acclaimed in their own right.
Originally set to be recorded in the US, the pandemic of 2020 saw the band relocate to the Worcestershire countryside, while producer Dave Fridmann worked remotely from across the Atlantic. An unusual setup, in an unusual year, but the results are startlingly focussed; ‘As The Love Continues’ sees Mogwai cover diverse sonic ground, drawing from many of their most interesting and successful creative peaks from previous albums.
Opening track ‘To The Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth’ is as huge as they've ever sounded; taking a simple, dramatic melody and gradually adding layers upon layers of shimmering clamour, while ‘Dry Fantasy’ adds a glorious analogue synth lead to an albeit more tentative backing track. ‘Fuck Off Money’ is vast - distorted cymbals slowly and malevolentally overpowering the track in five and a half minutes of blissful noise - while ‘Midnight Flit’, featuring contributions from Nine Inch Nails' Atticus Ross, is a superbly crafted synthetic journey, built on a solid rhythmic structure but beatufully adorned with keys and pizzicatto strings. ‘Ceiling Granny’, possibly the best titled track of the year, isn't post-rock - it's ROCK, in capital letters - bringing to mind Scottish peers Teenage Fanclub and Idlewild more than Slint or Explosions In The Sky.
Penultimate track ‘Supposedly, We Were Nightmares’ recalls the less Krauty moments of sometime label-mates The Phantom Band, before the perfectly titled ‘It's What I Want To Do, Mum’ sounds exactly like a band who have been together since their teens, and are still creating music they are excited and energised by.
Over their 25 years as a band, Mogwai have grown self-assured in both their abilities and their limitations, and while some bands struggle to fit all their influences into a distinct whole, Mogwai confidently defy post-rock conventions and stick to what they're good at; taking simple melodies and rhythms and garnishing them with an epic grandiosity.
‘As The Love Continues’ is Mogwai at their best, and is possibly their most consistent record since 2006's ‘Mr Beast’. Their mums should be proud” – CLASH
Choice Cut: Ritchie Sacramento