O I Sleep.

Madison.

I've been on a serious Mogwai kick of late. Just about any day, at any time, I'd be happy putting some Mogwai on in the background, but it's been really ramped up for the past several weeks. I think a good bit of it had to do with NaNoWriMo. Their dynamic soundscapes and general atmosphere of desolation fit right in with the Western/horror mix,¹ especially without the distraction of comprehensible lyrics. Plus, I've been obsessed with their music since... '98? Before Come On Die Young, but after the Kicking A Dead Pig + Mogwai Fear Satan Remixes double-disc release.

Recently, I've particularly been enjoying listening to "My Father My King", their interpretation of a traditional Rosh Hashanah hymn, while hunting out John Zorn's Masada² stuff on YouTube. Seth's really gotten me turned on to Zorn's stuff, and though I can't pretend to like all of it - if you're making experimental music,³ some of it's going to fall flat, or just not work for some folks - I'm enjoying much more of it than I'd expected. Mogwai don't have the lively unpredictability of Zorn's free jazz-inspired work - or the maddening blur of complexity-bleeding-into-confusion that entails - but they benefit greatly from the more rigorous form and composition of their songs. Each song has an overarching wholeness, a uniting theme under which they operate. It lets them do what they do best, better than anyone else I've ever heard: explore a massive dynamic range.

You can get a good sense of this from their albums, particularly Young Team. Though, for perhaps their finest recording, try "Like Herod" from Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996 - 2003, which is darker and more intense than the Young Team version. "Like Herod", simply put, is their finest work.

Should you really wish to experience Mogwai's music, you need to see them live. Or get a stereo system that you can get so loud - without losing the music quality, of course - that you can feel your insides twisting and shaking.⁴ Seth and I were discussing loud music, and he commented that there were certain sensations he'd only ever heard described, never felt, until he caught a Mogwai show. There may be other bands as loud, but not many. You can't watch Mogwai play without earplugs, but part of the necessary experience is the near-painful whole-body vibrations that accompany a sudden explosion of sound.⁵ At the first show of theirs I caught,⁶ they were extraordinarily loud, to a level I've not again experienced. They were playing the TLA in Philadelphia, and hadn't yet started selling earplugs at their shows, though my friends and I had the good sense to pick some up on the way.

I clearly remember the loudest moment of the show. At one point, late into "Like Herod", the music gets about as quiet as can be, with just Stuart delicately plinking on one or two very high-pitched guitar strings. Then, without warning, both guitarists and the bassist leap into the air, landing on their effects pedals and hitting the strings at the same instant. The girl standing directly in front of me - we were maybe four or five back from the stage - clapped her hands over her ears and dropped to the ground.

Brilliant.

Since then, I've been collecting almost all of their stuff, excepting a few releases that are too difficult to find without resorting to eBay.⁷ Even their cover of Link's "Arcadian" on the Warp Records 10th Annniversary remix compilation. Technically, it's a cover, since their "remix" doesn't include a single bit of the original Link track, but it's excellent. It's a lot like Juno's cover of DJ Shadow's "High Noon", the translation of an electronic/sample track to electric guitars and drums. Best song on the Warp compilation, though? Labradford's remix of LFO's⁸ "Freeze", overlaid with a constant, piercing tone that I adore but drives everyone else I know completely batty, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

So, yes, they're good loud. But Mogwai also have a delicate and lovely side, as seen in tunes like "Christmas Song".⁹ It's from one of those songs - "O I Sleep", one with lyrics, even - that I took the name of this blog. Actually, I used it as the name of last year's NaNoWriMo effort first, and liked it enough to use it again. The song is less than a minute long, highly unusual for a band that likes to use time to build layers of music.¹⁰ The lyrics go like this:

I wanted to see
if fire would burn me
you'd think I would know
if four walls could hold me
I wanted to see
if fire would burn me

There's even a video for it on YouTube:



I'm electing not to embed them here, but also worth watching are the two videos - each beautifully animated - for "Hunted By A Freak" and "Travel Is Dangerous". The first is disturbing. The latter, animated by Monkmus, is especially gorgeous.

* * * * *

¹Think "Ex-cowboy" from Come On Die Young, for example.

²Masada's various forms include the Masada String Trio, Electric Masada, Bar Kokhba, and probably some others, but they're all variations on Zorn's explorations of what he calls "Radical Jewish Culture". It's essentially incorporating some of the forms and rules of traditional Jewish music into the avant-garde scene, and most of what I've heard is genuinely fantastic. Check Zorn's label, Tzadik, for the massive catalog of his Masada (and other) recordings.

³And John Zorn is nothing if not truly experimental. Unfortunately, sometimes it feels like a great idea... conceptually, but fails to resonate with me on the level of actually listening to the music. Like when Yamataka Eye starts shrieking. Just... not working for me. Which is a shame, because sometimes I'm really digging the rest of the music beneath it. (Like some of the Naked City craziness.)

⁴I'm entirely serious about this. The back of the Flaming Lips album Transmissions From The Satellite Heart states: "Please play all tracks at maximum volume." For them, it's a recommendation, and a funny, sort of tongue in cheek one at that; the Flaming Lips don't need loud. Mogwai's music suffers without its dynamic intensity.

⁵There is no point to watching a Mogwai concert video. As a general rule, videos of live performances are lacking. I guess it's not as ill-advised as trying to get the feeling of a Flaming Lips Boom Box Experiment from a recording, but it's close.

⁶With godspeed you black emperor!, nonetheless, who were in spectacular form. This was before they changed their name to godspeed you! black emperor, for whatever oblique reason.

⁷Like the Travels in Constants series, which you could only get by purchasing the whole series for some too-large sum. (Since I wasn't jumping for the rest of them.)

⁸Low Frequency Oscillator, the British electronica guys, not Lyte Funky Ones, the American boy band. Though a Labradford remix of boy band cheese-pop would be well worth listening to.

⁹Not to be confused with "Christmas Steps" from Come On Die Young. (Or, as it's referred to on the No Education = No Future (Fuck The Curfew) EP,^a "Xmas Steps".) "Christmas Song": Soft, pretty, delicate. "Christmas Steps": Best played so loud that the walls shake.

^aThe EP takes its name from a youth curfew that was imposed in Glasgow to address kids getting into trouble. The band, with a number of others, protested the action, arguing that providing education opportunities for kids was a more appropriate solution, whereas a curfew would do little but punish (and upset) the vast majority of innocent kids. I have the non-recalled version, which features "Xmas Steps", "Rollerball", and "Small Children In The Background". "Small Children..." replaces the original version of "Helps Both Ways", which later appeared, modified, on Come On Die Young.

The original version - which is superior to the one eventually released - featured the music overlaid with an excerpt of John Madden's football commentary, which it matched eerily well. Madden, however, refused to give permission to release it, so the EP had to be recalled, and the track replaced with the intense, static-filled soundscape that is "Small Children...". They kept the title, though, which comes from Madden's last words on the track: "...you know, it really helps both ways."

¹⁰"Like Herod": 11:44. "Mogwai Fear Satan": 16:18. "Ex-cowboy": 9:09. "Christmas Steps": 10:39. "My Father My King": 20:12.