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Mogwai [loud noises]

Started by drummersaredeaf, November 25, 2018, 05:27:55 PM

Previous topic - Next topic
Seen these boys the past few nights, and they really are delightful aren't they.

Consistently good, and have changed significant aspects of their sound as they've evolved. They're prolific these days too with a load of soundtrack stuff coming alongside the official records.

Talk to me about Mogwai.

sevendaughters

seen them 3 times in the early-mid 00s in three different environs (supporting The Cure, headline show, mid-afternoon lesser-played songs set at ATP) and they were barnstorming. I devoured absolutely everything up to Happy Songs For Happy People and I still like pretty much all of it. I once interviewed them and they were really nice; Barry told me he spent a few days in Wigan as a kid as a result of some friends his parents made on holidays.

That said, by then, it was like 4 albums proper + at least 4 more albums of assorted other stuff, so I felt I'd done my time with them and moved on from them and 'post-rock' in general. I have heard bits from the last decade and they all seem good without making me want to go back and become a huge fan all over again.

I'd see them again though. Rock Action is a terrific album, their best from front to back.

Spiteface

Been a fan for almost 20 years. First thing I ever bought of theirs was "EP" (The one with "Stanley Kubrick on it)

Seeing them tomorrow, saw them in Bristol earlier in the year and it was brilliant. I think Every Country's Sun was a bit of a return to form for them, as it's the most I've enjoyed a new Mogwai album in a while.

And yes, evolution is good. Don't get me wrong, I'd kill for more stuff like "My Father My King" and "Like Herod" but the way they've changed sets them apart from other "post-rock" groups, some of which I also love dearly.
Quote from: sevendaughters on November 25, 2018, 05:40:53 PM
I'd see them again though. Rock Action is a terrific album, their best from front to back.
I was going to say Young Team was better but then I realised you're actually right.

My favourite album would be Happy Songs for Happy People, but that might be becuase thats when I saw them play live.

If you were to force me, I'd say The Hawk is Howling or CODY as my faves. Hawk because it starts and ends with a number of my favourite pieces of music, and CODY is really coherent as a whole. Plus the triple hit of chocky/cowboy/Xmas is incredible.

The new Kin soundtrack is great too. Their soundtrack stuff has consistently ranked in my favourite work by them.

Vodka Margarine

Rock Action is still one of my very favourite albums. Take Me Somewhere Nice - jesus wept. 

hummingofevil

I saw Mogwai in The Roadhouse in 97 and then again in Sankey's Soap for launch of remix album. Two of my favourite gigs ever. A few time since I've loved them live but nothing beats their early football-shirt-wearing, pilled-Up fans vibes of those early gigs. They a boring soundtrack band these days. Which is fine but not for me. Anyone else at the Edinburgh Festival Dougie Paul tribute gig about 5 years ago? That floored me.

Yes I Am A Long Way From Home just destroys me. :)

I always preferred Dial:Revenge from Rock Action. 

They have played a lot from the most recent release this time round, but there are a fair few from the back catalogue that have reappeared - including Take Me Somewhere Nice, Long Way From Home...

Lots of the earlier quiet/loud stuff still gets an outing too.

sevendaughters

I'd say my fav tracks off everything I am intimately familiar with are

TR - Tuner (love both Helicons though)
MYT - Katrien
KADP - Third Eye Foundation remix of A Cheery Wave From Stranded Youngsters
CODY - Ex-Cowboy (maybe their best? The greatest summation of their thing?)
EP+6 - Superheroes of BMX (the better version of Xmas Steps, maybe my favourite release all told)
RA - it works best as an album but Dial: Revenge is their best example of songcraft
HPFHP - Ratts of the Capital

Random not widely-available stuff from this era I liked: Hugh Dallas, Sad DC, cover of Don't Cry.

Yeah it was probably better when it was pills, Kappa, and hilariously slagging people off. Lots of in-jokes for song titles, that put me off I think.

I don't think they're a boring soundtrack band necessarily, but they've done that as you probably get more cash up front than you do for a 'real' album. Once you get them musically they're not going to surprise you necessarily, they won't start using different intervals or abandon basic rock instrumentation.

Pauline Walnuts

I went to see them in 1997 playing a charity gig in 1997, I was so drunk I left early as I thought the support band, who had a Didgeridoo, was them

I was very, very drunk at the time.

Great in the early days, loudest group I've ever heard and they've set off the Radio 1 emergency tape on at least two separate occasions by being too quiet. I like that.

Still not listened to their last by one album, I found the 3 before that were a bit in one ear out the other to be honest.

thraxx


I went to what I believe was their first London gig at the Astoria.  4th on the bill behind Broadcast, Gorky's and Pavement.  Best line up ever, it was some NME thing.  They still had all their hair then.

When they came on and started noodling into New Paths to Helicon no-one paid any attention, people just thought they were the roadies.  They didn't even turn the lights up apart from funny table-globe things upstairs. 

Then it got to the loud bit and it was honestly like a nuclear weapon, people being physically knocked backwards by the blast of sound. 

I last saw them in Wolves in 2002 and they were still impossibly loud.

The last record I got of theirs was the one that sounded like Nintendo Gameboy music and was terrible.

I don't listen to any of their records now and probably wouldn't see them, but I'm still very glad they exist.  I'll poke my nose into this new records though and will get it if it's not terrible like the last one.

Quote from: OnlyRegisteredSoICanRead on November 26, 2018, 01:38:48 PM
the support band, who had a Didgeridoo

Was it Dr Didge?

Pauline Walnuts

#11
It could have been Cylinder, according to http://youngteam.co.uk/brightlight/eng/gigs97.php

Who apparently did one track on:
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Spooky-Sounds-Of-Now/release/1541697

And nothing else.

Spiteface

So I saw Mogwai at St David's Hall last night. All seated. Started OK, got better as they went, main set finished with Mogwai Fear Satan. I expected an encore.

I did not expect MY FATHER MY KING~! Every band has a song or two they don't play that often, but it's a genuine treat when you get to see them play it. This was one of those, for me. It was gloriously loud and heavy.

sevendaughters

yeah I saw them do that in Liverpool once (probably not long after they released it) and I had to leave in the last 3 minutes of punishment to get the last train but I think some people took it as me not being a double hard bastard. i love how the recorded version seems to add and add and add but there's always that central refrain/hook through the fog.

alan nagsworth

Mogwai are one of those bands I'm super fussy about. I don't think the post-rock genre is much cop anyway and I've never found myself particularly drawn to any of Mogwai's variations on that theme, except the album "Happy Songs for Happy People", which it would seem probably came into my life in the right place at the right time, because I really love that album. "I Know You Are But What Am I" is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard, "Moses? I Amn't" is perfect somber winter music and "Ratts of the Capital" is just the right amount of doing the same riff over and over and building up to a crescendo that I can stand in that sort of music. Really just hits the right nerve for me.

Outside of that, I've not listened to their other records for ages but I always found them quite uninteresting in the studio (especially the soundtrack stuff which is not my scene at all) and absolutely fucking blazing hot on stage. I copped them playing at ATP in 2007 and found them phenomenal.

And that's my opinion on the band Mogwai.

sevendaughters

depends what you mean by post-rock I guess. once the genre codified into major-relative minor twinklings that get progressively louder, that are part of that whole replacement of the religious aspect where volume and uplift indicates some kind of 'ecstastic moment' - then i suppose the jig was up. but for me a lot of the early "post-rock", indicating a non-blues/non-noise attempt to take the basic rock instrumentation into new places was really pivotal for my development as a listener. like it was a really wide sphere that had groups like Labradford, Tortoise, Gastr del Sol, Third Eye Foundation, Bark Psychosis, Hood, late Talk Talk and Slint have been variously categorised as post-rock.

Chris Ott's A-Z of post-rock is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg9vBtqKvK8

sardines

First time I first saw Mogwai the support was Jackie o Motherfucker and Bardo Pond. Both of which made the headliners look pretty derivative. I also didn't get the volume hype. They were loud but not LOUD.

Saw a lovely Stuart Braithwaite solo show and then some better Mogwai shows after that. Then this year they were average again. Summary: the lazy fucks need to up their game when I attend.

non capisco

'The Hawk Is Howling' is my favourite Mogwai joint. It ostensibly sounds like a lot of their others but there's some kind of especially wintry melancholy on tunes like 'I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead', 'Danphe And The Brain' and 'Scotland's Shame'. I tend to absolutely rinse that album every January when I'm usually skint, sober and have nothing else to do but go on long aimless walks.

jobotic

Loved Young Team and played it to death. Bought the earlier singles compilation and a couple of singles and felt the same. Saw them at the Astoria I think in 1997 and they were ace.

Then bought CODY and was bored shitless and haven't bothered since. Often thought I may have made a mistake though.

king_tubby

First saw them at the Duchess in Leeds in 98? Seen 'em probably about a dozen times since, last time in Glasgow for the 20th anniversary. Young Team remains the benchmark but I also really like the soundtrack to The Returned.

Their defence of Barry Hogan has soured me towards them nowadays, and I wouldn't bother buying their records or going to see them any more.

Jockice

They have some superb song titles. Probably the best band for song titles since Wire. I'll give them that.


Spiteface

I hoped it was going to be that one! The song isn't one of Mogwai's best, but yeah, that title.

Anyway, this might be one of the most un-Mogwai-ish songs Mogwai ever did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENhUR-yYcxw

It's not bad, in a "Stuart Braithwaite fronts Dinosaur Jr" way. Better than "Teenage Exorcists" which I've since mellowed towards, but that song REALLY had me worried when it came out.