Mogwai

About

Eight studio albums, a live album and four compilations, four soundtracks, a record label, and a few blown PAs and dislodged pieces of ceiling over uncountable gigs, not to mention a series of amusing Twitter accounts reviewing hotels and on-tour dinners. Over the 21 years since they formed with rehearsal after rehearsal rattling Stuart Braithwaite’s living room, Mogwai might have become one of the most important groups of a fragmented but increasingly potent British musical underground, but they’ve steadfastly refused to sit back and rest on their laurels. Indeed, you might refer to them as the cockroaches of post rock, for Mogwai have never split up for a while in favour of a lucrative reunion playing classic albums live, instead continuing to push themselves and their sound. Then again, as any cursory listen to their 2015 compilation Central Belters will tell you, is post rock really a generous enough term to describe what Mogwai do? Over 20 years their one constant has been of a mastery of dynamics, an embracing both of power and minimalism, and a willingness to experiment with new instrumentations and technology. Within that though, one of the most recognisable sonic identities in contemporary music unites the songs as disparate of graceful sung moments like Travel Is Dangerous or epic Black Sabbath temper tantrum My Father My King, the shimmering, stately atmosphere of I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead or the burbling kosmische electronics that drive Mexican Grand Prix. The Mogwai of 2017 is a very different group to the four kids who, in February 1996, released their debut single Tuner/Lower to a musical climate suffering the appalling hangover of late Britpop. Theirs was a sound of happy accident, Stuart Braithwaite, Dominic Aitchison, Martin Bulloch, John Cummings and later Barry Burns uniting over shared love of skateboarding, Star Wars, The Cure, and American indie rock to somehow end up with music that was, and remains, as affecting as it is powerfully loud, as

Artists

• Mogwai
• Papa M

Sources

• aeg · aeg-events-json v1