• Preview: Mogwai - The Hawk And The Howling

Wenige Bands gibt es die mich mein Leben lang stetig begleiten. Da sind die grossartigen The Notwist oder auch Sigur Ros. Und da gibt es Mogwai! Ich kann mich noch erinnern an die guten alten Zeiten. Hardcore, Grindcore, Punk ging für mich irgendwie vorbei. Zumeist elektronische Musik trat in mein Leben. Doch eine Band blieb mir immer treu. Mogwai. 'Young Team' hat mich damals aus dem Sessel gehauen. Das war brachial, laut, lang, intensiv. Gitarrenwände, ruhige Momente, grandios. Live wurde Mogwai x-mal besucht. Am grossartigsten das Konzert im Prime Club in Köln. Dort habe ich zunächst gelitten (diese Drogen), Marc mich mit diversen Colas gerettet und dann hat es mich weggeblasen, hin- und hergerissen, an die Wand gedrückt und durchgewirbelt. Mit dem Rücken zum Publikum zelebrierten Mogwai ein Noise- Rockprogramm aller erster Güte. Wahrlich eines der intensivsten Konzerte die ich je besucht habe (Neurosis in Wermelskirchen fällt da noch in so eine Kategorie). Oder wieder im Prime Club mit Andreas. Mogwai waren so extrem laut! Die Plätze an den überdimensionalen Boxen waren leergefegt. Die Besucher standen wie ein Block vor der Bühne, die krass lauten Stehplätze links und rechts davon durch die verzerrten Soundwalls wie ausgestorben, über den Besuchern wehte eine Diskokugel wie im schlimmsten Hurrikan.

Nun also wieder ein echtes Album (die Live CD, 'Young Team' Reissue und der Zidane Soundtrack mal ausgenommen). Von dem Gitarrenwandsound haben sich Mogwai ein wenig verabschiedet und es bricht nur noch stellenweise aus ihnen raus, doch klingt es nicht weniger intensiv. Mogwai verzichtet gänzlich auf Gesang (auf der Batcat EP ist dann doch ein Song mit Gesang: 'Devil Rides'). Nun lass ich die unterschiedlichen Schreiblinge zu Wort kommen, die das neue Mogwai Album in vortrefflichster Weise zu beschreiben wissen, hier in ungekürzter Form zu finden.

01. I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead
"There is a yearning and loneliness in this track, which builds slowly. It seems a sure bet that this generally happy-go-lucky Scottish combo had to engage some serious soul searching in order to come up with a title for the track that reflected the heaviness and overall mood they were attempting to put forth." Gordon Lamb
02. Batcat
"Like a drunken, awkward sexual exploit in the back of Weekend Dad’s Corolla, it packs a lot of rage and misery into those five minutes. The guitar stings and squawks like some sort of poisonous bird. The drums pound as though they’re beating someone. The bass is both monolithic and serpentine, like an ancient Grecian pyramid slithering through an exurban daffodil garden. Even by workout standards, these workouts are pretty intense. The beat stops. The bass rumbles." Emerson Dameron
03. Danphe And The Brain
"Those little skitters sprinkled atop the majestic post-whatever instru-guitar drone." Michael T. Fournier
04. Local Authority
"Vibrato guitar sets sail upon a languid shoal of electric piano and brushed drums, painting a picture in the listener’s mind as vivid and stark as any ECM album cover from the mid-seventies. Eschewing the cataclysmic blasts favored by Mono, who would have gone nuclear three minutes in, Mogwai doggedly maintains the supple flow, gently piling upon simple melodies, creating a heaving lattice of sadness and regret. A searing Fripp-like strain lurking just beneath the water’s edge threatens to erupt, but it remains held in check, like a monster from childhood teasing from the ebbing darkness of memory. Mogwai proves yet again that minimalism need not be chained to the rock of simplicity." Chris Arrison
05. The Sun Smells Too Loud
"The song quickly sways into an almost gentle circular pattern with a speaking guitar line that has generous amounts of Verlaine-ish sheen. There is no quiet/loud/quiet dynamic to speak of, and I think it no accident that this particular track lays at the middle of the album. What we have here is the gyroscopic center, twirling with confidence, never reaching beyond its grasp, and keeping all in its orbit precisely in place." Billy Carter
06. Kings Meadow
"King’s Meadow” is yet another reliably slow, trudging and labored patience-tester; in other words, this Scottish band’s stock and trade. It’s amazing, however, the lengths Mogwai will go to bore the living shit out of you." Tony King
07. I Love You, I'm Going To Blow Up Your School
"The seventh track, “I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School” makes two promises. The first is that Mogwai has fallen deeply in love with you. The second is that it will prove this love by destroying your school." Brendan Lloyd
08. Scotland's Shame
"I like this song in the pleasure derived from NOT hearing another group of disrespectful fucknuts in their early-20’s unknowingly raping the worth out of someone else’s previous brilliance (or mediocrity) and calling it their own, the truth lies
elsewhere." Andrew Earles
09. Thank You Space Expert
"In this seven-and-a-half minute collect call from Glasgow, you can practically hear Mogwai absently strike their guitars, glockenspiels and who-diddly-dang-bangles with one hand, while gathering coats and galoshes for the hard slog home with the other. It is this lack of focus and exigency that constrains what could have been another triumph for the lads." Christopher Arrison
10. The Precipice
"As the guitars curlicue around the pounding of mannish tom-toms like the garland of graying pubic hair around your uncle’s boner, Mogwai offer you a lollipop and the promise of videogames, the ghost of Slint dulling your senses into a glassy-eyed hypnosis, until you realize that Mogwai are fucking you, fucking you, fucking you." Eran Greenberg

"Life is a highway, and Mogwai will ride you all night long." Eran Greenberg