A journey across northern, desolate windswept moors, where the warning signs of an approaching storm grow steadily stronger, until they finally sweep everything away. That's the feeling conjured by the sonic tapestries woven by these five Scottish lads, who for years now have been feeding our craving for melancholy and sweet sadness. That feeling is made even stronger in the band's live dimension, in Italy for four dates of their European tour.
The "young team" knows how to strike at the heart, and does so with every song, with every instrument, with every note.
"You don't know Jesus", "2 rights make 1 wrong", "Stop coming to my house", "Itaca", come across, if anything, even more intense than their studio versions, driven by an almost relentless use of soaring, distorted guitars that build a dense, compact layer of pure emotional noise.
"Mogwai fear Satan", on the other hand, hurts. It hurts when, over tribal, distant drumming, a sonic, violent wave of electricity comes crashing down, plunging everything into a sea of decibels falling from the sky. But it would be pointless to break the show down episode by episode. It's more telling instead to consider it all as one single, great composition, defined by their musical paradigm. A paradigm dictated by a romantic attitude, on which to build an imposing yet resigned wall of sound, where laying down our weary souls becomes inevitable. Theirs is a sonic expression of a state of mind. Repetitive? Perhaps, but terribly captivating and absolutely necessary.
It closes on the searing guitar squalls of "Ratts of the Capital", a show of powerful emotional impact. You go home drained but happy, with the feeling of having received a lot, but also of having left something behind. There, at the foot of the stage, if you look closely, you can find shreds of wounded hearts, swept away by a devastating hurricane called Mogwai.
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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by OndaRock Staff, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.
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original design & development by
Edoardo M. Cappuccio
Edoardo M. Cappuccio
redesign by
Gabriele Brombin
Anna Quaranta
Gabriele Brombin
Anna Quaranta