MOGWAI
some kind of
ter
It may have a weird title, but Mr Beast is one of the great albums of 2006. Mark Robertson meets its makers, Mogwai, and finds the band are kings of their castle.
K. so it‘s not actually a castle and there's not a great deal of doom being dished out as far as anyone cart see but it's still pretty cool. Mogwai's (ilasgow studio. the ‘(‘astle ol' l)oom' as they have so delicately christened it. is a small. converted house at the back of a church that looks out onto the relative tranquillity of (ilasgow‘s Kelvingrove Park. The view is only sporadically interrupted by the occasional Sl’T double decker bus. Stuart Braithwaite. guitarist. occasional singer and de facto frontman of Mogwai. leads me through doors. up stairs and round the various nooks of their studio. It is a rabbit warren. the kind of building aspirant (‘olin and Justins would be gagging to buy. gut and carve up into even more warren-like starter llats. There‘s little space for lkea llat pack furniture here though: there are enormous battered chrome and black flight cases. stacks of guitar arnpliliers. drums. sundry mic and cymbal stands balanced against walls and a floor strewn with so many miles of cable it resembles that snake-covered temple floor that made Indiana Jones so queasy.
‘We like it.‘ declares Braithwaite. proudly. ‘The gtry we bought it from had already litted it out as a studio here so we just added our own . . . touches.‘ he says. gesticttlating towards the huge (‘eltic poster on the wall.
Upstairs in the control room work is in progress. Relative quiet man and resident guitar heretic John Cummings is hunched at a computer screen among mugs of tea. notebooks and ashtrays. In the background. the band‘s producer Tony Doogan paces despairingly in circles. as he attempts (in vain) to have a call centre worker in India understand the intricate problems with the studio‘s broadband connection. The atmosphere is somewhere between excitement and mild tension. as the band leave for America in three days and have to finish their contribution to a feature film by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. On the sizeable TV above the mixing desk. the shins and thighs of French footballing god Zinedine '/.idane sway back and forth. Undemeath. a pair of glistening guitar melodies intertwine on top of a stoic cymbal and bass drum heat.
It is obvious that several key things drive Mogwai. The unbridled exploration of their
musical horizons may be at the heart of
everything but football comes a close second. It‘s this that makes them such a natural choice for this project with Gordon. Cummings sums it up gently with: 'Us'.’ Write the soundtrack to a film about football? Fuckin' yeah!‘
(ilasgow artist (lordon is most readily known as the WW) 'l'urner l’ri/e winner for 34 Hour I’syt'lm. an installation for which he slowed down the Alfred Hitchcock classic so that it lasted a day. This new adventure is entitled lit/(me: .-l lel ('t'nmrv Portrait. The documentary film directed by (iordon and lirench artist l’hilippe l’arreno has been described as half way between documentary and conceptual art installation. (iordon trained l5 cameras on the Real Madrid and lirench international star for the duration of an entire match against Villarreal and this footage is intercut with that from a TV broadcast of the same game. Mogwai have provided an original score for the lilm.
‘There was some rnusic that was recorded and not used from our album sessions and others we did from scratch.‘ says Cummings. ‘We hadn‘t seen any footage at the time but now it's cut together it just seems to work.‘
I am treated to an excerpt of the film. a peculiar. if enthralling. experience driven by Mogwai‘s plaintive. sonorous magic represented in glorious 5.l surround sound. The film trails '/.idane like a sniper: he swims in and out of focus as the soundtrack throbs. ebbs and flows in synchronicity. lt‘s otherworldly music soundtracking an otherworldly sportsman.
We go downstairs to the lounge. Six laptops clutter the coffee table. ‘()ne for each of us.’ declares multi-instrumentalist. musical anchor and entertainingly sarky bastard Barry Burns.
Mttsicians rarely live up to their press persona. although Braithwaite relating stories of watching Interpol almost collapsing in the brutal 'l‘exan heat because they wouldn‘t remove their leather blazers comes pretty close. The rest of Mogwai are no different. Their reputation for being belligerent. outspoken. even cruel in the press. stems from a desire to spout forth about various cultural phenomena. UK. so printing tip 'llshirts with ‘Blur are shite' emblazoned on them is pretty militant. but the band claim to be something too few in the masic industry are: honest.
‘There‘s no need for people to be so sycophantic.‘ says Burns. 'That's why I went off on one about the Brits [being shit]. We don‘t deliberately berate people: we're Usually just reacting to stupid things. whether it's I’IIM. Gorilla]. or James Blunt.‘
While they may not suffer fools gladly. they are similarly unforgiving of their own back catalogue at times. ‘Rru'k Action is three songs and about seven fuckabouts.‘ Braithwaite admits. The general consensus among them currently is that 2006's Mr Beast. their sixth album since
sports
13—27 Apr 200‘) THE LIST 23