Legendary Glaswegian post-rockers Mogwai celebrate their 30th anniversary with a special live show at Theater des Westens in November.
The arrival of a new Mogwai album – their eleventh – is cause for great celebration. The album’s title, The Bad Fire, is a working-class Glaswegian term for Hell. It reflects the difficult time that members of the band were going through. New to the studio was American producer John Congleton, known for his work with Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Rós, John Grant and pretty much everyone in between. Congleton’s work can be heard on the album’s three singles. The album opener “God Gets You Back” sounds like Daft Punk being hunted by My Bloody Valentine, while “Fanzine Made Of Flesh” sounds like a victory parade for a baby yeti; and “Lion Rumpus” does actually sound like a lion rumpus.
The music of Mogwai is a difficult thing to describe, but an easy thing to experience. At punishing volume, it can annihilate your body, leaving you as little more than a head which should by rights fall helplessly to the ground. Yet the music contains an updraft, a sense of beauty encased in the onslaught. This holds you up, suspended and empowered, reminding you that paradise is your birthright. This is especially true of The Bad Fire. It may have been created in dark conditions, but all that is transcended by the act of four musicians working together here, now, in the moment – the only place where Mogwai exist.
2025 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Mogwai – which is not a celebration you would have ever predicted back when they formed in Glasgow in 1995. Recognised as one the of the most important and influential artists of the last quarter century, the Scottish experimental rock band have released numerous critically and commercially successful studio albums, including scores for high-profile productions such as French supernatural drama, Les Revenants. Mogwai also established their own independent record label Rock Action Records in 1996, first as a way to release their own records but which has since developed and expanded to include releases from both local and international artists.
