By Remo Kortbeek
UCR Class of 2016
The Scottish post-rock band Mogwai has been around for 19 years and has spat out 8 albums during that time. Their mostly instrumental music tends to the harsher regions of post-rock music using distorted riffs, while still maintaining the grandeur that is so characteristic of the post-rock genre.
This sound is also clearly apparent on their latest installment, Rave Tapes, released this year on the 20th of January. Though you can immediately tell you are listening to a Mogwai album, this does not mean that nothing has changed. The most important new addition to their arrangements is the haunting synthesizers that are prominently present on the first single Remurdered, the third song on the album. The repetitive drones create an unsettling atmosphere and while they stay in the background at first, the synths take the lead in the second half working towards a climactic ending.
After Hexon Bogon, a song that falls back to the guitar-driven history of the band, the Glaswegians go into a more traditional post-rock direction. Replenish has a calmer atmosphere than the rest of the album: it would have fit perfectly on the soundtrack Mogwai composed for the French Twin Peaks-esque zombie series Les Revenants. The only feature that distinguishes this from the eerily haunting pieces on that soundtrack is the monologue about the subconscious satanic message of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven that is dubbed over the song.
Blues Hour is the only song on the album that has actual sung lyrics. Stuart Braithwaite’s calm voice makes it into a beautiful composition full of melancholy. It is a slow burner that starts off calm and depressing but builds up to a grand climax.
The album closer, The Lord Is Out Of Control, is yet another song that uses text. This time they use a vocoder, in effect, a “talking synthesizer”, which results in a “Daft Punk goes post-rock” song that would have been completely out of place on any earlier Mogwai album. Still, it fits perfectly here, due to its similar synth-based sound.
To really experience the band’s intense vibes, attending a concert is an excellent occasion. The Scots have a great live reputation characterized by an overwhelming wall of sound. Mogwai just visited Belgium and The Netherlands in the end of January, but they will be back at the Dutch festival Best Kept Secret this June, and probably more festival shows will be added to their summer tour.
Mogwai has created an album that continues on their successful formula of grand and raw post-rock, while also implementing more electronic elements to keep things fresh. Rave Tapes is a drifting river that transfers emotions varying from suppressed rage to melancholic depression. Never does it get joyous or blissful, but the strong and complex compositions make for an enjoyable experience on one of the best albums of 2014 so far.
Remo Kortbeek, class of 2016 is a Linguistics and Art History major from Tilburg, the Netherlands.
