Describing Mogwai to the uninitiated is not an easy task. The only thing that i can confidently say is that it's like nothing you've ever heard before. The Scottish lads 1997 debut 'Young Team' is one of the most genre-defying albums I have ever heard. It is very unique. Far too dynamic to be considered minimalism, too jarringly noisy and heady to be sad-core, yet the gentle soothing passages throughout are far too ambient to be considered noise-rock. Post Rock is the genre usually attached to Mogwai - but what the hell is post rock? This is just beautiful music.
"If the stars had a sound it would sound like this"
-Yes, I Am a long way from home
It is largely instrumental, with brooding, slow burning escalations of poignant, dark music with melodic washes of distortion that ebb and flow and build to almighty crescendos. There is a fine line between calm and chaos and this album walks that line with amazing poise.
This album encompasses, in a little over an hour i might add, pretty much everything that other bands in the genre of 'post rock' aspire to. It has menace and delicacy, abruptness and linearity, mystery and well-tempered artistic posturing. After listening to this you could argue that this album has had a more profound effect on hundreds of other artists than any other in the past 15 years or so.
It is refreshing in the sense that it's arty, dissonant, ambient, tasteful and well-produced. The sound is enormous. The music itself requires patience, because it does take a few listens to really sink in, but when it does you will be lost in the beauty of the sound. Lyrics are minimal, but dont get hung up on that.
I think most people are not used to having no lyrics to focus on. Lyrics are a real comfort to some people. I guess they like to sing along and when they can't do that with us they can get a bit upset. —Stuart Braithwaite
When i first heard this album, it hit me with such an impact that it forever changed how I listen to music and what I feel about it. It still blows me away today. Mogwai heralded something challenging and different to what I previously knew about music.
This album is the ultimate brooding, burning and possibly the most epic thing i think i have ever heard. This is heavy, but oh so pretty, dark and romantic, but also creepy and seriously ominous sounding. Soft, super blissed out meandering and almost ambient soundscapes with dark brooding passages of near silence, eventually shattered into a million pieces by bursts of frenzied, rhythmic noise, crushing and metallic and machine like, but always ready to drift and fade back into soft swooning tranquility and beauty. Even the loud and heavy parts are strangely melodic and ridiculously catchy.
'Yes, I am a long way from home' starts the album, a quotation followed by a lovely introduction, bass with a clean drum and a quiet melodic guitar riff over the top, the instruments fade in and out before the music works towards a crescendo of distortion while maintaining a soaring guitar rhythm before falling back into the outro. This leads into 'Like Herod', on first hearing this song i was completely spellbound by the rhythmic opening and i was seduced into an almost trance like state as a listened to the parts, fade in and out the layers of instruments and then.....BANG it was like getting hit in the face with a brick. The thunderous explosion of every instrument in a barrage of deafening noise, featuring a heavy drumbeat and highly distorted, screeching guitars that somehow find themselves back in their original quite melodic state within a short space of time. WOW. This song is an extreme display of Mogwai's quiet/loud dynamic contrast method that they are well known for and it is over 11 minutes of intensity.
'Katrien' continues with a beautiful melodic guitar line coupled with a spoken word lyric and some ferocious drumming, that moves into the same distorted melody before coming up for air. 'Radar Maker' serves as a piano interlude before the outstanding 'Tracy'. Instead of being predominantly guitar-based and featuring heavy dynamic contrast like the rest of the album, this song is based around a glockenspiel, remaining dynamically quiet throughout but having an ominous feeling that at any second it could explode as it works its way to a peak, the guitar, bass and drums working together but the calm of the glockenspiel wins out. In the background are two sampled telephone calls regarding disagreements between band members. It is a gorgeous and intriguing song in the midst of chaos. Back to the melodic anarchy with 'Summer (priority version)' before 'With Portfolio' brings a piano interlude with samples that morphs into a distorted static flicking from left to right speaker. I'm sure there was a reason for this, it really is confronting.
The mellow 'R U Still into it' is the only song on the album that is not an instrumental, the lyrics telling the tale of a relationship that appears to be over, slow and sad it leads into the penultimate song 'A cheery wave from stranded youngsters' which continues along the same route, a slow melodic and rhythmic take down to prepare you for the finale, the 16 minute 'Mogwai Fear Satan'. This is the Pièce de résistance, a song that is gorgeous, sublime, somehow deliberately and intricately cathartic and freakishly mind blowing and brutal as it works your brain through each stage taking you on a journey that for me is completely engrossing and absorbing each time i listen to it. I cant do anything but listen in awe.
This music can put a human being in a trance like state and deprive it for the sneaking feeling of existing. Music is bigger than words and wider than pictures.
-Yes, I Am a long way from home
Mogwai focus on shifting momentum between subtle understated melody and completely contrasting against that with explosive guitar noise & feedback that needs the volume turned up several notches to fully appreciate the complex texturing. Tracks lull you into a sense of security with rhythmic melodies that once you have accepted subsequently burst into feedback awash with furious musical intertwining. It is a sonic epic as the band break new ground by being non-conformist & ambitious, it is important, refreshing, complex, different and like nothing you have every heard before. It is not for everyone, its not party music, it is personal and it is for the right mood - but give it a chance and you might find yourself lost in this fantastic album.
It is truly astonishing.
