SCOTTISH POST-ROCKERS Mogwai are set to give local fans a taste of their visceral brand of cosmic rock first hand.
The band's roots can be traced to 1995, when Stuart Braithwaite (guitar, keyboards), Dominic Aitchison (bass) and Martin Bulloch (drums) began playing gigs around their home town of Glasgow. A second guitarist and piano player, John Cummings, soon joined them, and by 1998 the group had also recruited flute, guitar and keyboard player Barry Burns.
'I think Stuart got the name [for the band] from the 1980s film Gremlins,' says Bulloch. 'I learned afterwards from friends who were born in Hong Kong that the name has a more sinister meaning in Cantonese [devil]. One of my friends wrote the word for me in Chinese and I had the 'gwai' part tattooed on my arm.'
Taking inspiration from Slint, God Machine and My Bloody Valentine - 'we liked the way they used noise with melody,' says Bulloch - the band quickly established their own sound, which has gone on to define a genre.
Mogwai's trademark is a glowering, volatile instrumental rock with a slowly unravelling dynamic. Mesmeric, expansive arrangements simmer and build, reaching seemingly impossible climaxes. On recent albums the group have included vocal elements in their traditionally instrumental compositions.
'I'd say we focus on melody rather than words,' says Bulloch. 'Although if we write a song where we think lyrics or a voice would be beneficial then we will add them in.'
The results are records that manage to combine might with unusual subtlety. Their debut - 1997's Mogwai Young Team LP - seemed out of synch with the trends of the time, the antithesis to a musical context that typically looked no further than the pub-crunching rockability of Oasis or mod-obsessed mannerisms of Blur.
