Masters of sound and silence: Sanjoy Narayana writes on the band Mogwai
30 years after the post-rock group came together as teens in Glasgow, they are still filling concert halls with music that makes the chest vibrate.
The concert hall was thick with anticipation when Kathryn Joseph took the stage last week.
The Scottish songwriter’s ethereal voice drifted through Helsinki’s cultural palace, Kulttuuritalo, like smoke; her piano-led, synth- and drum machine-assisted melodies weaving around the audience with the kind of delicate intensity that makes one hold one’s breath.
Her opening act was perfect preparation for what was to come: a masterclass in how silence can be just as powerful as sound.
Then Mogwai arrived. No fanfare, no theatrics; just four musicians (Stuart Braithwaite, Barry Burns, Dominic Aitchison and Martin Bulloch) striding onto the stage with the quiet confidence of a band that has been doing this for nearly three decades.
In minutes, the venue was vibrating. The sound didn’t just fill the room; it possessed it. That familiar tidal wave of guitars began to build, threatening to overwhelm before suddenly retreating into passages so hushed one could hear people breathing in the crowd.
It was during one of the encores that the magic truly unfolded. An exuberant burst of light and sound erupted on stage, with all four men (including keyboardist Barry Burns, who abandoned his usual station for an additional guitar) creating a wall of noise that felt both cathartic and transcendent. In that moment, watching these masters of dynamics deploy their full arsenal, it was easy to see why Mogwai have outlasted so many of their contemporaries.
This is what they do best: trade in contrasts that disorient, overwhelm, and ultimately move you. Nearly 30 years after they came together in Glasgow, now touring Europe with their new album, The Bad Fire, they are still making music that treats dynamics not as a technique but as an art form.
Mogwai began in 1995, when Braithwaite and his friends, then barely out of their teens, decided to play the kind of music they weren’t hearing anywhere else. Their debut album, Young Team (1997), was an outlier in a Britpop-drenched Britain. Here were sprawling, instrumental epics that didn’t bother with choruses or hooks.
From the start, their music polarised listeners. Admirers heard something radical: symphonies built out of guitars and feedback. Critics dismissed them as repetitive, accusing them of hiding behind the same quiet-loud dynamics.
If that had been all they were, Mogwai would have fizzled out after a couple of albums, as so many others did. Instead, they kept growing. Over time, they folded in electronics, strings and processed vocals; scored films and documentaries; proved they could be tender and brutal in a single track. Each record sounded like Mogwai, but never quite like the last.
Three albums remain touchstones in their evolution.
Come On Die Young (1999) is the one I return to most. Unlike their fiery debut, this was restrained, patient and heartbreakingly beautiful. Songs simmer instead of exploding. The rare vocal track, Cody, proves the band can slay it with words as much as with waves of noise. This is a record that whispers rather than shouts, proving part of the reason for why the band endures.
Then there’s Happy Songs for Happy People (2003), ironic because these aren’t happy songs, though they are hauntingly gorgeous. Here, Mogwai lean into electronics, layering synths and vocoders with their guitars. The result is music that feels both fragile and futuristic. It is the kind of album one plays late at night, to lose oneself in sound. The closing track, Stop Coming to My House, still delivers chills.
Finally, there is Mr Beast (2006). This is Mogwai at their most muscular. After the quiet restraint of Come On Die Young and the delicate textures of Happy Songs…, Mr Beast hit like a thunderclap. Glasgow Mega-Snake is pure ferocity, while Friend of the Night balances that force with piano-led tenderness. This is the music of a band fully confident in its ability to shift between beauty and brutality.
What connects these albums, and indeed the band’s entire catalogue. is honesty. Mogwai have never been interested in trends, or in pleasing everyone. Their music doesn’t ask for one’s attention; it demands one’s immersion. That’s what has earned it such a lasting, devoted audience, even if it has also invited derision along the way.
The criticisms, that the music is too similar, too dour or too soundtrack-like, are not without merit. But they miss the point. Mogwai aren’t about instant gratification. They are about atmosphere, and the cumulative weight of sound and silence. These songs don’t necessarily unfold in minutes; they unfold in memory, long after they have ended.
That is why, nearly three decades on, they band are still filling rooms with sound that makes the chest vibrate. Still showing, night after night, that music can be less about words and more about what one feels when the lights dip and the first notes are struck.
In Helsinki, with Burns wielding that extra guitar and light cascading across Kulttuuritalo’s walls, that truth felt more evident than ever. Some bands chase trends. Others create them. The best ones simply follow a vision, wherever it leads. Mogwai have always been in that last category, and Helsinki proved they are a long way from stopping.
(To write in with feedback, email sanjoy.narayan @gmail.com. The views expressed are personal)
The concert hall was thick with anticipation when Kathryn Joseph took the stage last week.
The Scottish songwriter’s ethereal voice drifted through Helsinki’s cultural palace, Kulttuuritalo, like smoke; her piano-led, synth- and drum machine-assisted melodies weaving around the audience with the kind of delicate intensity that makes one hold one’s breath.
Her opening act was perfect preparation for what was to come: a masterclass in how silence can be just as powerful as sound.
Then Mogwai arrived. No fanfare, no theatrics; just four musicians (Stuart Braithwaite, Barry Burns, Dominic Aitchison and Martin Bulloch) striding onto the stage with the quiet confidence of a band that has been doing this for nearly three decades.
In minutes, the venue was vibrating. The sound didn’t just fill the room; it possessed it. That familiar tidal wave of guitars began to build, threatening to overwhelm before suddenly retreating into passages so hushed one could hear people breathing in the crowd.
It was during one of the encores that the magic truly unfolded. An exuberant burst of light and sound erupted on stage, with all four men (including keyboardist Barry Burns, who abandoned his usual station for an additional guitar) creating a wall of noise that felt both cathartic and transcendent. In that moment, watching these masters of dynamics deploy their full arsenal, it was easy to see why Mogwai have outlasted so many of their contemporaries.
This is what they do best: trade in contrasts that disorient, overwhelm, and ultimately move you. Nearly 30 years after they came together in Glasgow, now touring Europe with their new album, The Bad Fire, they are still making music that treats dynamics not as a technique but as an art form.
Mogwai began in 1995, when Braithwaite and his friends, then barely out of their teens, decided to play the kind of music they weren’t hearing anywhere else. Their debut album, Young Team (1997), was an outlier in a Britpop-drenched Britain. Here were sprawling, instrumental epics that didn’t bother with choruses or hooks.
From the start, their music polarised listeners. Admirers heard something radical: symphonies built out of guitars and feedback. Critics dismissed them as repetitive, accusing them of hiding behind the same quiet-loud dynamics.
If that had been all they were, Mogwai would have fizzled out after a couple of albums, as so many others did. Instead, they kept growing. Over time, they folded in electronics, strings and processed vocals; scored films and documentaries; proved they could be tender and brutal in a single track. Each record sounded like Mogwai, but never quite like the last.
Three albums remain touchstones in their evolution.
Come On Die Young (1999) is the one I return to most. Unlike their fiery debut, this was restrained, patient and heartbreakingly beautiful. Songs simmer instead of exploding. The rare vocal track, Cody, proves the band can slay it with words as much as with waves of noise. This is a record that whispers rather than shouts, proving part of the reason for why the band endures.
Then there’s Happy Songs for Happy People (2003), ironic because these aren’t happy songs, though they are hauntingly gorgeous. Here, Mogwai lean into electronics, layering synths and vocoders with their guitars. The result is music that feels both fragile and futuristic. It is the kind of album one plays late at night, to lose oneself in sound. The closing track, Stop Coming to My House, still delivers chills.
Finally, there is Mr Beast (2006). This is Mogwai at their most muscular. After the quiet restraint of Come On Die Young and the delicate textures of Happy Songs…, Mr Beast hit like a thunderclap. Glasgow Mega-Snake is pure ferocity, while Friend of the Night balances that force with piano-led tenderness. This is the music of a band fully confident in its ability to shift between beauty and brutality.
What connects these albums, and indeed the band’s entire catalogue. is honesty. Mogwai have never been interested in trends, or in pleasing everyone. Their music doesn’t ask for one’s attention; it demands one’s immersion. That’s what has earned it such a lasting, devoted audience, even if it has also invited derision along the way.
The criticisms, that the music is too similar, too dour or too soundtrack-like, are not without merit. But they miss the point. Mogwai aren’t about instant gratification. They are about atmosphere, and the cumulative weight of sound and silence. These songs don’t necessarily unfold in minutes; they unfold in memory, long after they have ended.
That is why, nearly three decades on, they band are still filling rooms with sound that makes the chest vibrate. Still showing, night after night, that music can be less about words and more about what one feels when the lights dip and the first notes are struck.
In Helsinki, with Burns wielding that extra guitar and light cascading across Kulttuuritalo’s walls, that truth felt more evident than ever. Some bands chase trends. Others create them. The best ones simply follow a vision, wherever it leads. Mogwai have always been in that last category, and Helsinki proved they are a long way from stopping.
(To write in with feedback, email sanjoy.narayan @gmail.com. The views expressed are personal)
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