When it comes to one-of-a-kind sounds, look no further than the Scotland-based, post-rock band, Mogwai. They hit your ear drums with a one-two punch of style and experimentation, and always take you on a true musical journey.
We first stumbled on them while I was visiting Japan in 2006. Maybe it was the reference to Gremlins that caught our eye, but once we heard “Auto Rock” we were hooked. Over the years, they have lent their skill and sonic textures to film, shows, documentaries and rocked out plenty of stadiums.
In 2016 however, they really outdid themselves with the score to Kin by our friends Jonathan & Josh Baker. Not content to stop when the credits rolled, they released an additional soundtrack for the film featuring expanded themes…and it is awesome! Check it out by clicking the image below…
The band has seen much across more than twenty albums, made it through the pandemic, and with the 2021 release of As The Love Continues they step it up again. The album sports their famous distant harmonies, relentless build ups, pensive drones, sharp guitars, fuzzy-buzzy distortion, synths and pedals aplenty as well as track names as cool as they are nebulous.
Obviously we had a lot of questions about their method and their music, so we sat with Barry Burns to talk about that and more. We had a lot of laughs, but there was just one rule for our session: don’t feed the band after midnight!
Mogwai have advanced without a plan since they were teenagers, there have been no secretive meetings to work out the master plan. It is rare to hear a band that has been going for this long, and have this many albums behind them – ten records in and still no disappointments or mistaken creative left turns.
You may know what to expect, but you will never get the same. Both transcendent and surprising, As The Love Continues shows that Mogwai are still offering solace from the mundane, supplying the soundtrack to whatever movie you are making in your head.
As The Love Continues is the follow up to 2017’s Every Country’s Sun. In between the band released a career-spanning retrospective Central Belters and collaborated with filmmaker Mark Cousins to soundtrack his documentary Atomic. They also did amazing work on the soundtrack to the drama ZeroZeroZero. Get it digitally or on vinyl at Bandcamp, and check out all the other great Mogwai albums!!
