Mogwai - The Illusionists of Noise

"Our only weapon is instinct. That's why we don't feel 'intellectual' at all, nor do we claim to be artists." With these words, Stuart Braithwaite (formerly of Eska), guitarist and the man responsible for writing most of Mogwai's songs, described what is the most important aspect of the Scottish band.

Their model is clearly the American band Slint, from whom they borrow the formula of instrumental rock with rare, near-spoken vocal interventions. Compared to the Louisville masters, though, Mogwai are less cold and restrained, far more melodic, and show both a desire to play with rock's topoi even as they dismantle them, and a spontaneous, visceral ethic built entirely on a representation of emotion unmediated by reason. The biggest difference from Slint is in fact that here we're in less cerebral, less alienating territory, one aimed instead at recording, with ruthless sincerity, emotional journeys that don't necessarily need to reach a resolution but can dramatically build tension and pathos only to burn out and start the whole process over again with the next track.

Through a series of stylistic evolutions, Mogwai would go on to establish a true archetype of that strand of post-rock built on long guitar-driven tracks alternating soft, stretched-out passages with genuine explosions of sonic fury, following the loud-quiet-loud formula.

Part of the Glasgow scene alongside acts like Belle And Sebastian, Mogwai were formed in 1995 as a three-piece: alongside Stuart were Dominic Aitchison on bass and Martin Bulloch on drums. A few months later the trio recruited a second guitarist, John Cummings.

In 1997 they self-released their first LP, Ten Rapid, on their own label, Rock Action. The album's subtitle is "Collected Recordings 1996-1997": it is, in fact, the complete collection of the early compositions that first introduced the band to the British public. The opening track, "Summer", follows the formula that would recur throughout the group's work: a quiet beginning with clear, limpid sounds, followed by a sudden seismic jolt of feedback — a scheme perhaps overused by many, but one that works here thanks to the strong emotions that seep through the songs. The standout track on this debut is without doubt "Ithica 27 Ø 9", two minutes of wild distortion that's never there just for its own sake.

On their softer tracks, Mogwai have a gentleness that inevitably recalls the calmer side of Tortoise, as in "A Place For Parks", where faint melodies are accompanied by background spoken word: the band's instrumental bent is already clear at this stage. Stuart explains the choice in these terms: "When we rehearse we never think about developing a song. That would be too easy. It would mean falling in line with bands like Oasis and Blur, trying to nail the summer single. We're not interested in any of that. That's also partly why most of the time we prefer to write entirely instrumental pieces. A lot of the time we ask ourselves whether we really have anything interesting to say. Almost always the answer is no. So what we're best at is just playing."

After the release of Ten Rapid the band's fame grew enormously, and taking advantage of the ferment building in Glasgow thanks to the alternative sound championed by Chemikal Underground, they were signed by the label run by Delgados (another Glasgow band who ran the Scottish label). A few months later came 4 Satin Ep, marked by a crossover between experimentation and modern progressive.

Having recruited another guitarist, the third, Brendan O'Hare, formerly of Teenage Fan Club, Mogwai went into the studio to record their first "real" album, Young Team, for which they decided to credit themselves under pseudonyms: Stuart became pLasmatroN, Dominic became Demonic, John was Captain Meat, Martin was Bionic, and Brendan turned into The Relic.

The album came out in October 1997 and delivers emotion without respite. The opening "Yes! I'm A Long Way From Home" starts as a bucolic ballad, driven by a melodic bass and gentle six-string touches, until the instrumental tension builds and a heavily effected guitar bursts in. But this is merely a simple introduction to the band's true stylistic manifesto, the long odyssey of "Like Herod". It too begins softly, though more tense thanks to the drums' circling neurosis, then, just as everything seems to have settled into stasis, a crushing riff comes crashing in, bordering on metal, accompanied by the rhythm section surging back. Once the climax is spent, a new calm returns, destined once again to be swept away by an explosion of feedback and percussion; after this earthquake, the track slowly fades out.

The track is a true manifesto of Mogwai's dramatic art, able to conjure thriller-like atmospheres between menacing silences and controlled outbursts of majestic guitar fury. What stands out is their use of distortion and dissonance in a key that's less noisy or disturbing than pictorial, built on a refined sense of timbre and the tactile effects of sound, which brings them close to shoegaze aesthetics. The result is a kind of blockbuster for lonely bedrooms, free of baroque flourishes or narrative ambition.

Then come more rides on the guitar rollercoaster, like "Katrien" and "Summer", propelled by simple melodic phrasing and by the interplay of dynamics created by the rhythm section and the flaring up of distortion. "Tracy", on the other hand, offers a more intimate atmosphere closer to what the band would pursue on later records, built on a simple glockenspiel phrase picked up by bass and drums, against a backdrop of distant, glacial echoes. "With Portfolio" acts as the album's watershed, its limpid piano line gradually ravaged by electronic distortion, leading into "R U Still Into It". This picks up and completes the record's atmospheric strand, offering slowed-down folk and the voice of Aidan Moffat of fellow Scots Arab Strap, in an exercise that cements Mogwai's ties to their colleagues' slowcore and to a shared conviviality of melancholy and passion born among the pubs of Glasgow's university quarter at the turn of the century.

The two minutes of the piano-led "A Cheery Wave From Stranded Youngsters", finally, are a small abyss of unease that precedes the final apocalypse. "Mogwai Fear Satan" is in fact the record's second towering peak, after "Like Herod", as well as the most representative track of Mogwai's early period. Here, over an obsessive, drumming rhythmic base, walls of distorted guitar rise up, with the same motif taken up in turn by bass, guitars and finally a flute that comes to tinge the pauses between each electric swell with mystery, especially in the magical final coda. All of it builds into one long psychedelic mantra, over 15 minutes of cathartic trip and emotional release, complete with a final sense of relaxation and fatalism.

Mogwai, then, are capable, like progressive bands, of building long and intricate songs using rich, classical-leaning instrumentation, but their choice to eliminate vocals sets them apart from the narrative drive of certain exponents of that movement. The musical shifts within the songs are in fact also sudden changes of mood, often veering into hysteria or, conversely, into depression: this dynamic derives from Slint and the hardcore school that preceded them, and a Sonic Youth influence is also likely. Above all, attitude matters most, for a band that would go on to title the opening track of their next album "Punk Rock" — a way of underlining that whatever is made with heart and gut is as punk-rock as the music of 1977, regardless of the musical forms chosen.

Finally, the atmospheric yet thunderous sweetness owes a debt to My Bloody Valentine, while the torrential flow derives from both new psychedelia (Bardo Pond) and old (Pink Floyd), though here every hope of "mind expansion" has been lost. The difference compared to the neo-psychedelic bands who, not coincidentally, were finding success at the end of the '90s — think of Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips — is that Mogwai are deadly serious, not given to playing with kitsch or with assorted musical forms, remaining faithful to their minimalism even when tempted by the possibility of expanding their sonic spectrum. That's why they will never reach the grandiloquence of another band, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, who would start from similar premises to build, instead, veritable symphonies.

Young Team can be considered a rather restless synthesis of a musical decade, the '90s, which had opened with two devastating records, the aforementioned My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" and Slint's "Spiderland" — two sonic worlds between which the early Mogwai find a twilit middle ground. While the formula would spawn an entire musical lineage (among its heirs we can certainly cite Explosions In The Sky), Mogwai lay the groundwork for a sonic path that is, all things considered, humble in its pursuit of melody and the pure feeling that have always been rock's true subject.

In 1998, after a six-month European tour, a remix album drawn from Young Team was released on the Eye-Q label, titled Kicking A Dead Pig – Mogwai Songs Remixed. Various artists contributed, most notably Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, one of Stuart and co.'s idols.

In 1999 Mogwai went back into the studio with Dave Fridmann (producer of the Mercury Rev album "Deserter's Songs") to record Come On Die Young, an album again released on Chemikal Underground. A record some have described, comparing it to Young Team, as the calm after the storm.

The album opens with the atmospheric intro of "Punk Rock" (which includes a fragment of a speech by Iggy Pop): it's a title that confirms the band's desire to play with rock's topoi right as they're dismantling them, but it's also a programmatic statement about their spontaneous, visceral ethic. The real incipit, though, is "Cody," the record's only sung track: a moving, whispered elegy with sonorities close to country (there's a lapsteel guitar). The following "Help Both Ways" takes us into the territory of instrumental rock indebted to the lesson of Slint's "Spiderland" (1991), with a slow pace of repeated guitar phrasing and dry drumming. It's a laconic digression that leaves the listener waiting for a change, for a climax in which to release the tension — without this ever truly happening. "Year 2000 Non-Compliant Ex Cardia" makes this process explicit with greater rock tension and opens the door to the restrained drama of "Kappa": propelled by an obsessive riff and an inexorable rhythmic pattern, the track advances between stasis and exhausting crescendos, conveying the sense of an anger that turns into resignation only to awaken cyclically, again and again.

"Waltz For Aidan" is exactly what its title promises: a delicate melodic cartilage that serves as an interlude before "May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door." This fragile, delicate yet expansive section highlights a "chamber" sound that characterizes the whole record, where the heavy distortions of the debut are almost entirely set aside and faint drones and delicate keyboard pointillism appear instead. The track's tension builds up without need of any "special effects," but through the gradual piling-up of dry riffs, aided by the drums' mounting tempo. When the climax finally arrives, though, the initial serenity returns, in a circular motion.

A piano sonata at the end of the world is instead the interlude preceding "Ex Cowboy," the epic heart of the whole album. This is perhaps the track that most recalls Young Team, in its slow coagulation of bloody guitar matter, with drum rolls pushing the tension to the point of spasm only to drive it back down and up again, in a swing that lasts more than nine minutes. This refined, clean sound, of a clarity that elevates the band's naive sentimental extremism, is the fruit of their collaboration with producer Fridmann. "Chocky," meanwhile, opens — after two minutes of assorted dissonance — into a piano sonata of crystalline melody, then brings in all the other instruments, one after another, in a crescendo more chamber-music than rock, despite the clouds of distortion gathering in the background. In the end, once the storm has cleared, we find the purity of piano and guitar counterpoint once again.

Mogwai remain ever faithful to their minimalism: their consistency is borne out by "Christmas Steps," which, after minutes of utter listlessness, detonates first into a Slint-style rhythmic interlock and then into the ferocious guitar wall that had been expected from the outset. But we're near the end now, and there's only time left for a dazed, closing requiem produced by the intervention of a mournful trombone — a kind of farewell to old rock and to the century that hosted its deeds.

The introverted, depressed mood of the early years of the new millennium — which would not coincidentally see the Icelandic arctic mists of Sigur Rós triumph, but also the amniotic Radiohead of "Kid A" — is anticipated here. The hedonism of Britpop, meanwhile, already seems far in the past (luckily, Mogwai would say), and the very axis of British music shifts from London to Glasgow, as if there were a need for a more intimate setting, suited to cathartic outbursts and warm shelter against the chill of the coming millennium. It's the small epos of the alternative youth of the era — perhaps a little off the beaten track of London's coolness epicenter, but nonetheless in need of warming its heart ahead of the cold to come.

Commenting on the turn taken with Come On Die Young, Stuart observes: "The melancholy? I don't know where it comes from. All I know is that what we try to do is express what we truly are, to lay ourselves bare without any reservation. That I can't deny. But even this isn't a method. It's not something preconceived. We could never go into the studio trying to choose which chord is more or less melancholic. We simply feel like a group of guys who, following instinct, play whatever music they feel like, without preconceptions. If Mogwai's music sounds minimalist today and comes across as melancholic and spiritual, nothing changes for us. We're still just a bunch of young guys playing for the joy of playing and being free, doing whatever crosses our minds."

And so it's always instinct, whether it follows melancholic or angry paths matters little, especially because these paths often converge in visionary, splendid places. One of these goes by the name of Rock Action, an album released two years after Come On Die Young. The producer is the same, Dave Fridmann, and the sonic choices aren't too far removed. Violence hasn't disappeared — it's simply more illusory, concealed behind dreamlike, airy atmospheres, like those of "Sine Wave," one of the record's signature tracks.

Two main curiosities mark this new work: the "notable" collaborations with David Pajo and Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, who join Stuart's voice. Indeed, it's the voice that is Rock Action's great surprise. Out of eight tracks, it appears in as many as four — something that for the Scottish band had always been just an "occasional accessory."

Only a blurred, mnemonic reverb of the former Young Team survives — "You Don't Know Jesus" — for the rest, it's a further stripping-down of their original structures: minimalist, never-distorted guitars, sometimes acoustic, no feedback, no dissonance, rare background noises, slow, opiate beats, and a timid recourse to horns, strings, banjo and synths: the drumming on "Sine Wave" might even call to mind the most crepuscular Trent Reznor. Mogwai unexpectedly converge toward the most classic song-form, sharply reducing both the average length of the tracks and the overall runtime of the record.

It would thus seem like a self-assertion against post-rock, yet the last two tracks conceal the nine minutes of the suite "2 Rights Make 1 Wrong," wild, restless and poignant, and the closing "Secret Pint," more markedly post-rock, running against the grain of what's just been said; and as if that weren't enough, on "Take Me Somewhere Nice" none other than Mr. Slint himself, David Pajo, appears on vocals.

It's a case of thesis and antithesis, if you will. On Rock Action, inheritance of the past and rejection of it coexist, as do condemnation and celebration of post-rock, even calling into question — fittingly, in keeping with Dante's law of contrapasso — its leader maximo. That said, these two opposing forces, on close listening, don't actually clash, and the record as a whole is a pleasant listen, even if it doesn't fully live up to expectations. Ultimately, Mogwai pass the test of their third album with dignity, if not without some reservations, and remain stuck in limbo.

Following the ensuing tour, however, it becomes clear that the supposed, nostalgia-laden serenity achieved on the album was just that — supposed. Sung tracks rarely appear on the setlist, and it's sonic violence and rage, at times spilling directly into noise, that dominate.

Bearing this out, towards the end of 2001 comes the EP My Father My King: twenty minutes of digressions, feedback and shifts between calm and turmoil that end in schizophrenic noise, as if Mogwai wanted, for the umpteenth time, to scream that no carefully plotted project could ever move anyone. And in the end, their only goal has always been this: to offer an emotion to those seeking unreal dimensions.

On the following album, Happy Songs For Happy People (2003), the Scottish band strikes a kind of synthesis between past and new paths, all but eliminating conventionally sung parts (they resort to vocoder on a couple of tracks), while at the same time sanding down the more abrasive, noisy edges of their sound, pursuing music closer to pure form, to ambient watercolor, to listening that projects upward, guiding the listener toward a soothing catharsis rather than the unease of dark explosions and the shifting tones that defined the records that made them famous.

Mogwai only slip back into their old skin on "Ratts On The Capital", tellingly the longest track on the record, but a vibraphone isn't enough to give backbone to a scheme that is, in the end, quite predictable, and the track is only partly redeemed by a fine ending. It's right, then, that they should finally try new paths, and in tracks built on fairly similar solutions, like the opener "Hunted By A Freak" and "Kids Will Be Skeletons", we find the main features of this new musical pursuit, where a structure close to conventional song form provides the foundation for layers of guitars, strings and effects aimed at creating autumnal, ethereal, wide-open soundscapes. Something that brings them close to the style of Air or early Sigur Rós, or even Múm (see a track like "I Know You Are But What Am I"), capable of yielding good results, as in "Killing All The Files" and "Golden Porsche" for instance, but also, at times, giving the sense that certain ideas were left unexpressed for want of a clear direction.

Mr. Beast (2006) marks a return to what they once were, to deflagrating explosions and the most stinging feedback. But it's also the extreme opposite of its predecessor, because its aching romanticism pretends to hold back only to then give way to outbursts of searing, delicate violence.

The intro to "Auto Rock" lays out the coordinates of what's to come: piano chimes building an intensely lacerating melody, developed over a subtly dirty, unreal crescendo that makes room for an illusory final ecstasy. The nod to the past lies not so much in substance as in form, unyielding in disowning itself in favor of the hardcore orgy of "Glasgow Mega-Snake", one of the band's most apocalyptic episodes, built on a relentless chase of guitars forced into head-on collision. A physicality rarely screamed at the world so loudly, dizzying in how it presents itself and devoid of the symbolic footholds highlighted in "Folk Death 95", a potential hit for old and new followers alike, thanks to distortions and dissonances wrapped in a stripped-down sentimentality. And so a track like "Travel Is Dangerous" could almost seem like the manifesto of an album of furious depth: Barry Burns's vocals flow over frantic, inconsolable webs of dazzling, lurching guitars, yet ready to dwell on reflections bound for a false final relief.

Unyielding in their pursuit of the purest instrumental sensitivity, tracks like "Team Handed" and (above all) "Emergency Trap" exalt the idea of silent passion, as uncertain in potential as a love story on the verge of ending, yet steady, as if trying to shake off life's transience. "Friend Of The Night" elevates this vision further, a twin to "I Know You Are But What Am I?", but more fervent in its ethereal atmospheres, anxious as it unfolds in crescendos as restrained as they are decisive in their crushing interplay between guitars and piano. And while the minimalism of the drum machine on "Acid Food" encapsulates the doctrine of the self-contained ballad, "I Chose Horses" begins as if wanting to strip away every layer, before handing the stage over to Tetsuya Fukagawa's (of Envy) spoken word, delivering fragmentary snapshots of sulfurous beauty.

It seems inevitable, then, with Black Sabbath as godfathers, that it should end with "We're No Here", heightened by an inconsolable sense of drama and forced to plunge into impure waters, with no chance of resurfacing.

The following album, The Hawk Is Howling (2008), instead brings Mogwai back to long, entirely instrumental suites, through which they freely test, on one hand, their own compositional skill, while confirming, on the other, all the traits of a now well-established sound — indeed, brought almost back to its original source. Having dropped the timid evolutionary ambitions shown on their last few records, the band puts its skill to work in meticulously precise juxtapositions of tempo and texture, in a kind of back-to-the-future move that reinterprets the classic Mogwai sound through a more mature sensibility — the very sound that, to strike and engage listeners, never needed words or contrived overstructures built for the fleeting pleasure of impressing.

With the near-total exception of the clattering single "Batcat", which features a notably thickened guitar mass paired with dry, driving rhythms, "The Hawk Is Howling" shows the Scottish band in its most romantic guise, one that, rather than the jarring contrasts between quiet passages and sudden surges, favors the reassuring embrace of muffled atmospheres in constant, circular motion.

If one insists on finding an internal link within the band's discography, it's Come On Die Young that comes to mind most often across the album's grooves, particularly in its best moments — starting with the elegiac solemnity of the opener "I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead" (a title that says it all...), introduced by Barry Burns's engaging piano, through the repressed force and tension smoldering under the ashes of "Danphe And The Brain", all the way to the rounded, dreamy sounds of the oblique lullaby "Thank You Space Expert".

But even where the sound grows more substantial, as with the guitar arabesques of "I Love You, I'm Going To Blow Up Your School", there remains a meticulous attention to effective harmonic solutions and to melodies that, beneath their apparent fragility, reveal the latent turmoil of feeling — which only occasionally surfaces, but more often internalizes the tension until dissolving it with almost psychedelic effects ("Local Authority") and through the fluidity of gradual movements, furrowed only by faint electronic traces ("Kings Meadow") and unpredictable hints of a bare, effects-free vintage rock ("The Sun Smells Too Loud").

A similar approach and carefully calibrated evolutions of the now well-established Mogwai sound also characterize Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (2011). Here too there's no shortage of moments of abrasive guitar impact ("Rano Pano" could be the natural evolution of "Batcat"), as well as quick forays into the band's past, through echoes that, from time to time, recall Happy Songs For Happy People, the masterpiece Come On Die Young, or even the youthful twists of Ten Rapid (incidentally, a certain Paul Savage is back behind the mixing desk...).

This is no longer a record that can be filed under "post-" anything, nor even under... hardcore; rather, it's a work in which the Scottish band surveys various facets of their own take on a rock that is, in a sense, "classic", albeit heavily grafted with feedback saturation, electronic pulses and incandescent psychedelic flights.

Simplifying as much as possible, across the record's fifty-three minutes, three main through-lines can be traced: the pursuit of a granite-like sonic impact, a decidedly vintage-flavoured electro-punk acidity, and the persistent construction of a romantic descriptivism, once again entrusted to soft arrangements and Barry Burns's piano. The first is felt immediately in the pounding beat and abrasive guitars of "White Noise", as well as in the nervous rhythmic lines of "San Pedro" and above all in the long electric bender of closer "You're Lionel Richie"; the second introduces a kind of sparse-note psychedelia and a "motorway" motorik on "Mexican Grand Prix" and on the dense "George Square Thatcher Death Party", both marked by vocal filtering that spices them with a vague Eighties flavour. But it's in the album's third main line that, beyond the aforementioned gradual variations on the theme, more familiar modes resurface — not that they're in any way obvious, since Mogwai show once again that they know their craft, whether crafting an ultimately "canonical" track like "Death Rays" through rounded, high-velocity propulsion, or giving themselves over to the pianistic languor of "Letters To The Metro" and the solemn emotional intensity of "Too Raging To Cheers".

A few months after the album, the Ep Earth Division saw the light of day, the result of the band's declared intent to present thoroughly heterogeneous tracks, united only by the minimal common denominator of romantic string arrangements.

Mogwai's stylistic chameleon-like nature condenses, in little more than a quarter of an hour, all the typical features of their past sound, pairing them with decidedly surprising ones: who would have thought you'd hear the standard-bearers of British post-rock engaged in a muffled acoustic ballad like the splendid "Hound Of Winter"?

The opening and closing tracks of the Ep fall more within the realm of what Mogwai have represented so far, presenting a mirrored scheme, interpreted through oblique piano notes on "Get To France" and soft guitar iterations on "Does This Always Happen?", while "Drunk And Crazy" is the most "experimental" track of the bunch, with its — fittingly — drunken, schizoid progression, moving between abrasive initial torsions, a romantic interlude and a majestic crescendo, all traversed by feverish synthetic ripples.

Earth Division, then, is nothing more than a handful of songs disorienting in its own way, which beneath the guise of an apparent divertissement adds to the band's discography yet another Ep of the highest calibre and — it's fair to venture the prediction — potentially significant for the continuation of their career.

A year later comes A Wrenched Virile Lore, the remix album of Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. Dismantling from within the balance of the Scots' (to date) latest full-length was no easy task, but Mogwai seem to have quite a taste for surprises: and so here we find ourselves holding an unexpected little gem, a genuine counterpart to the original album. Credit goes to the host of high-profile guests involved, but also to the unusual choice of summoning some of the most highly regarded names in experimental electronic music, past and present. The electro-shoegaze of "George Square Thatcher Death Party" reworked by the magnate Justin Broadrick (the man behind countless ventures including Godflesh, Jesu, Final, Napalm Death and Techno Animal) is the booming introduction to the performances of Klad Hest and Cylob: the former, hidden under the curious moniker Mogwai Is My Dick, loads up on acid and deconstructs "Rano Pano", while the latter turns "White Noise" into a sweet analogue litany for synth and vocoder. Less incisive is Xander Harris's hypnagogic take on "How To Be A Werewolf", while kindred in cosmic mood are Zombi's "Letters To The Metro" and the "Too Raging To Cheers" courtesy of Matt Hill aka Umberto. The standout episodes, however, bear the dazzling signatures of Soft Moon, Tim Hecker and Robert Hampson: the former's "San Pedro" is a futuristic psychodrama of din and reverb, "Rano Pano" is illuminated amid the drone-noise glare of the second, and the thirteen minutes entrusted to the third evoke the emotional isolation of the best Loop, merging "White Noise" and "Death Rays".

A Wrenched Virile Lore is one of the most successful remix albums of recent years, as well as the cherry on top of the excellent Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will saga. A colourful alternative framing for an album of complex, costly expressive power, still not fully understood to this day.

As always, Mogwai offer us the chance to see the world through a perspective that is not different yet feels new, for an epiphany of emotions tinted in the colours of the purest romanticism and, for that very reason, painful. Because even celestial beauty, to truly be such, must know how to get its hands dirty.

The Scottish quintet's evocative power finally finds consecration in a soundtrack, thanks to the French series Les Revenants — an adaptation of Fabrice Gobert's film of the same name — which tells the story of dead people who mysteriously come back to life, but whose resurrection coincides with strange and inexplicable events.

Les Revenants makes delicacy and purity its principal defining trait. It aims straight for the heart rather than taking the long way round through roads and metaphors. Of the imposing arrangements and instrumental blankets the band had accustomed us to, almost nothing remains: broken down to the bare minimum, they take the form of light string touches, gentle synth drizzle and barely-sketched rhythms. The result isn't far from Michael Andrews's finest soundtrack work ("Donnie Darko" chief among them), from which it's easy to believe the five of them took more than a little inspiration.

The music-box sound of "Hungry Face" is the perfect introduction: an atmosphere of tension hinted at in the middle of a dream, which resurfaces more composed in the pristine expanse of "This Messiah Needs Watching", in the restless "Fridge Magic" and, despite its title, in the resigned litany for synth and guitar of "Relative Hysteria". In the darker-toned episodes, the expressionist talent of Braithwaite and co. manages to express itself even more clearly: such is the case with the subdued "The Hurts", the melancholic "Kill Jester" and the more tense "Eagle Tax". The few flashbacks to post-rock sounds surface only in the neurosis of closer "Wizard Motor", in the ethereal crescendo of "Special N" and in the obsessive, sinister "Portugal" — tracks that would not have looked out of place on their most recent albums. The one exception to the record's mood is the divertissement "What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?", an acoustic ballad halfway between McCartney and Pink Floyd's "Saint-Tropez".

Mogwai in soundtrack mode prove quite astonishing, revealing yet another new face and adding another piece to the already heterogeneous puzzle of their career.

Nine months later, Rave Tapes brings down to Earth the sound that the soundtrack's fourteen gems had developed in a parallel universe, the first hints of which, on closer inspection, had already surfaced in Happy Songs For Happy People, a full ten years earlier. This marks the Scottish quintet's definitive arrival in an intimate dimension, where melody becomes the central element and the crescendos lose energy to gain colour, with keyboards and synthesizers charting the course and hermetically containing the floods of guitar, bass and drums. All of it accompanied by that surge of heart, spontaneity and humanity capable of giving life to a magical preamble like "Remurdered" — half languid, candy-coated cradle, half solemn arpeggiator charge, a perfect summary of the direction the album takes — or to that mix of melancholy and serenity that had made the previous record's fortune, revisited here in the sweet watercolour opening of "Heard About You Last Night" and the gentle music box of "No Medicine For Regret". While the raw "Master Card" briefly looks back to the vibrations of "Rano Pano" and "Hexon Bogon" aims (too eagerly) for the swollen rivers of Mr. Beast, the coordinates of the "new dimension" are instead identified in the otherworldly mantra of "Repelish" and in two wonders like the flying carpet of "Simon Ferocious" and the lunar, odd-metered motorik of "Deesh". Crowning an album second in atmosphere perhaps only to its predecessor, the five of them slot in two of the most extraordinary climaxes of their career: the ghostly, disarming "Blues Hour" and the poignant "The Lord Is Out Of Control", capable of unleashing in one go, guided by the vocoder and a perfect dialogue between rising guitars and electronic fronds, the river of tears held back until then.

Rave Tapes marks Mogwai's definitive entry into a new sonic era, as well as an equally stellar distancing from that circle still commonly called post-rock, as rich in magical moments as it is, in fact, propped up by a handful of clichés. Nothing to do with the freedom that has always set apart the Scots' saga and that their music still manages, more than ever, to convey in its gradual shift from the force of the storm to the apparent calm of the dream.

In April 2016 Mogwai released a new soundtrack: Atomic, a reworking of the music composed the previous summer for the documentary "Atomic: Living In Dread And Promise", directed by Mark Cousin for the BBC, made to commemorate a dramatic anniversary: the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima tragedy. The Scottish band immersed themselves fully in the atmosphere, even visiting Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, and produced ten deeply evocative tracks, relying almost exclusively on electronics. The opening "Ether", steeped in melancholy and epic tones, with its skilfully crafted crescendo, immediately sets the tone for the album, throughout which we find the typical ingredients of the Mogwai sound: a taste for repetition and progressive accumulation ("SCRAM"), a martial, decaying gait ("Pripyat"), ecstatic grandiloquence ("Bitterness Centrifuge"), wave-like accents ("U-235"), cosmic rarefactions (present more or less everywhere). The second half of the record has more descriptive moments (the pace of "Weak Force" and "Little Boy" is almost unsettling), and musically reserves its greatest highs for the emotional "Are You A Dancer?" (with the violin in fine form) and the slightly disturbed "Tzar".

Piano first, then guitar, chisel out the desolate conclusion of “Fat Man”, named after the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the epilogue of World War II. Then silence. The destruction has happened. The slaughter is done. In Atomic everything is conceived in service of the narrative, following a logical thread instrumental to the unfolding of a storyboard, documentary as it may be. And the results are striking: watching the film reveals a perfect marriage of sound and image, yet the music remains compelling even when detached from the documentary. By now on a par with all the most celebrated contemporary soundtrack composers, Mogwai couldn't produce a failed project even if they really tried. And here too, they don't disappoint.

Every Country’s Sun (2017), far from any radical turn or sonic revolution, keeps the bar high on quality and sonic perfectionism, a trait that has always defined the Scots' career. Typically post-rock moments alternate (“20 Size”, the adrenaline-charged “Battered At A Scramble”, the hypnotic “Don’t Believe The Fife”, and what seems to be a nod to June Of 44, “Old Poison”) with less predictable ones like “Party In The Dark”, a pop attempt that opens dark-wave before giving way to shoegaze guitars and britpop harmonies. “Crossing The Road Material” is a blatant nod to Neu!, a track that would have fit perfectly on any of the first three albums by the creators of the motorik beat. The most intimate and minimal moment is “Aka 47” — one of the album's high points — which shows just how indissoluble the bond between post-rock and ambient can be. The title track “Every Country’s Sun” gives us a band still able to fuse, in just five minutes, melody and passion, technique and imagination, as in their golden early years. The opening “Coolverine” — chosen as the first official video — is something of an emblem for the new Mogwai: great simplicity built from just two or three guitar notes, over which the other instruments layer themselves. It's all old yet entirely new at once; the Scots seem to have far more lives left in them than one might reasonably have expected from their dazzling debut.

In 2018 they return to soundtrack work with Kin, a dystopian sci-fi film directed by debutant brothers Jonathan and Josh Baker. The Scots once again prove themselves masters at conjuring atmospheres rich in varied shades, often giving the impression of doing so with surprising ease. Their recipe of post-rock with kraut and ambient influences seems never to run dry.

Those obsessive kraut rhythms (in Neu! style) resurface clearly in the frantic “Flee”, but variety is never lacking. From the (near) solo piano of “Eli’s Theme”, to the synthetic textures of “Funeral Pyre”, to the slow rhythms of “Miscreants”, Mogwai adapt professionally to the images, striving to meet the directors' demands. But it's when they remain themselves that they find greater strength and impact. The instrumental crescendo of “Donuts” is the album's manifesto, powerful and emotional, full of the energy and pathos Mogwai have accustomed us to in their golden periods. “Kin” and “Gun’s Down” also contain many of their trademark elements: melody, slow tempos with sudden accelerations. The album closes with the only sung track, “We’re Not Done (End Title)”, a shoegaze flight that comes across like a lesser, watered-down version of the ballad “Party In The Dark” from the album Every Country’s Sun.

In 2020 they return to soundtrack work with ZeroZeroZero, the TV series based on the novel by Roberto Saviano, directed by Stefano Sollima. The album contains the typical duality found in part of their discography, being at once perfect and predictable. The tracks move within already well-established patterns, in a continual self-quoting that can seem repetitive, but which also suits the task at hand: accompanying the images of a TV series. What's certainly missing is that moment that leaves you stunned or even breathless, despite the generally good quality. In short, there's plenty of craft and precision, but it lacks the flight of fancy or stroke of genius that would have truly elevated it.

The tenth work by the Scottish post-rock goblins, As The Love Continues (2021) is their best in a long while. The way it plays out like a showcase of the band's sonic tropes and tricks, arranged in a parade of eleven inspired and uneven tracks, generates so much enthusiasm that on first listen the album may thrill even more than it perhaps should. This time, admittedly, Braithwaite and his cohorts have played it a bit crowd-pleasing, but on As The Love Continues certain ascents are so sheer and certain backdrops so deep and refined that the charming trick is welcomed with the same smile of children who keep waiting for Santa Claus even though they know full well who he really is.

The opener (“To The Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth”) is a slow, atmospheric piece worthy of seasoned soundtrack composers: a sooty synth backdrop, solemn piano tolls, and then, once the tension becomes palpable, down comes a wall of guitar noise made to glitter by John Cummings' organ blasts. From there we move on to the shimmering “Dry Fantasy”, passing through the videogame-like electronics of “Here We, Here We, Here We Go Forever”, which continues the intriguing rhythmic and synthetic work begun with the underrated Rave Tapes from 2014.

Essentially a sung, aching foray into the melodic alt-rock of the 90s, “Ritchie Sacramento” stakes its claim as the band's best song in the literal sense. The track has such impact and structural roundness that it makes you think the band has ventured far too rarely into this territory. In short, something that many fans of “Take Me Somewhere Nice” will want to add to their playlists. Decidedly more alt than post riffs also drive the adrenaline-fuelled “Ceiling Granny”, which, between headlong dives into flanger and blasts of noise, offers no shelter or respite.

“Drive The Nail” is also quite violent, and as such offers its best at higher decibels; while “Fuck Off Money” is a vocodered invitation to plunge into oceanic depths where occult synthesizers and storm-tossed guitars warble. With guitars skidding amid a baroque blossoming of strings and keyboards, “Midnight Flit” is another highlight of the record, as well as further proof of the band's utterly boundless inspiration. The album closes with a trio of more intimate, panoramic tracks, where it's the details and finishing touches that astonish, rather than the usual emotional rollercoaster made proverbial by the band's quiet-loud dynamics.

By their own standards, the Mogwai of As The Love Continues are remarkably direct, forgoing slow, cumulative builds in favor of betting everything on the explosive power of ideas and their execution. Were it not for the great variety of approaches on display, this would recall the roaring Mr. Beast from 2006.

After the well-deserved success of As The Love Continues, the Scottish band's first album to reach number one on the UK Chart, the following album The Bad Fire (2025) proved to be a difficult birth for the Glasgow band, arriving after a period full of personal troubles, including the serious illness of multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns' daughter, who was saved from danger thanks to a bone marrow transplant. Recorded in just a few days under the skilled hand of producer John Congleton, who has previously manned the desk for Sigur Rós and Explosions In The Sky, it's an album as mature and knowing as it is lively and jovial.

The decidedly more pop structure of the compositions is skillfully tempered by an easily identifiable sonic body that ties back to the band's cinematic imagery, yet always full of those surges that underline their inspiration and their refusal to slide into routine (“Pale Vegan Hip Pain”). Hell (“The Bad Fire”) is, for Mogwai, the obstacle to overcome in this difficult moment, and so it's fitting that the album's synth-pop manifesto, “Fanzine Made Of Flesh”, avoids any avant-garde impulse in favor of a bewitching riot of synths and vocoder, and it's a shrewd choice to dress up the record's simplest, most banal melody (“Hi Chaos”) with instrumental digressions that lend it an enveloping intensity.

For a band that has in the past fussed over every detail of their output (from the artwork to the song titles), this latest album is decidedly listless, lacking the anger of their early days yet still caustic: the progressions and sonic dynamics of “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others” are exemplary in this sense, but Mogwai seem to have picked up new tricks for their alien post-rock creations, with shoegaze remodulations à la My Bloody Valentine (“18 Volcanoes”) and inspired forays into jazz structures, as well as kraut-rock, with the excellent “Hammer Room”, which finds the musicians creating a sonic vortex that lets each of them be both protagonist and bystander.

It's clear that for Mogwai too, as for many of their contemporaries, the moment has come to pass from rebel band to establishment band: like the dinosaurs of progressive rock, the standard-bearers of post-rock too are increasingly drawn toward song form, contamination with electronics, and a subordinate role for music as art form. What matters is living through this transition with fire and dignity — a fire only barely hinted at in “Lion Rumpus”, and a dignity that instead remains present for almost the entire album, reassuring both old and new fans of the Scottish band alike.

Contributions by Erik (“Rock Action”), Paolo Sforza (“Happy Songs For Happy People”), Raffaello Russo (“The Hawk Is Howling”, “Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will”, “Earth Division”), Matteo Meda (“A Wrenched Virile Lore”, “Les Revenants”, “Rave Tapes”), Claudio Lancia (“Atomic”), Valerio D’Onofrio (“Every Country’s Sun”, “Kin”, “ZeroZeroZero”), Michele Corrado (“As The Love Continues”), Gianfranco Marmoro (“The Bad Fire”).

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