Kingpins of a kind of rock that came after rock (What was that? Oh you mean that makes no sense? no, it doesn't. Whatever, I'm over it), Mogwai cultivate an image of being mildly unfriendly Scottishmen who have been studying the balance between power and melody in music, and the very special place where both meet.
Rest assured, this isn't the intro (yet) to a book I'm writing that would be titled "Mogwai: a decade-long study of dynamics in popular music", just to an article about their latest record, which also happens to be a live recording. Their first, I believe:
Mogwai, Special Moves
Rock Action, 2010
You'll find many reviews for this album. Most of them will describe the intensity of the songs, how Mogwai has been constantly innovating in their own fairly specific subgenre, and managed to maintain cohesiveness. They should then move on to describe the setlist choices, how each song is live rather than in studio, etc... They might mention some lack of direction, but will reassure right away with something like "most bands who sound like that do that" so if you like Post Rock, you should like this, hipster (offended? email me, hipster!)
It would be worthless to repeat this here. I understand lazy people, so I'll even put the link to two such reviews so you can get your usual info there:
How much time will the cheap trick of playing softly then bashing power chords for an entire show will go on? Long, I hope.
Buy the record. You get a dvd (which is supposed to be awesome, but that I never got around to see) and 6 bonus tracks. It's all good. Really good.
The packaging is gloriously minimalist. Black and white pixelated security cam with all caps text inside and one horizontal line of lightning blue as the only colored element. Should make the graphic designer inside of you (if any) shiver.
This is a comprehensive guide to Mogwai so far.
Recorded in Williamsburg. Keep it local, hippie.
That's all I got for now. Go enjoy it rather than read my nonsense. You better come back here though. I'll be watching you.
If you talked to me last week, it would have been hard to convince me that there is anything beyond Air, a few Noir Desir songs, Laetitia Sadier and something like 10 electro tracks worth listening to in recent French pop music. The Rita Mitsouko were never my thing, Daft Punk got old really quickly, Telephone ends up being a family classic (and that just ruins it - plus they've been inactive for at least a decade), and I believe I've made my point.
But this week, my hopes are a bit higher for contemporary French rock music (or just French music in general). That's because of a band called Rien, which means literally nothing(haha - sorry...).
Why do you need to like this band (or at least listen to it)?
Because knowing cool French bands other than Phoenix, Air and Daft Punk will make you successful with the ladies abroad.
More seriously (because it won't), Rien is a band from Grenoble, a medium sized French city like many others near the Mediterranean and the Alps. Useless info, you might say, but I like settings for stories.
In that city of Grenoble is an association called l'Amicale Underground (translatable as Underground Friends Union, or something like that, feel free to suggest better), which also serves as record label for Rien. First reason why you need to take a look at this is the Amicale's website in its lo-fi awesomeness:
The second reason: everything that comes out on the aforementioned label is FREE TO DOWNLOAD. I really appreciate that and I don't see why anyone wouldn't give this a try after such a move.
The third reason: if you buy one of the 500 copies of Rien's EP "3" (for 10 €, shipping included, which is a very fair price compared to what some people do), not only do you get a collectible item, you get A VERY FREAKIN' NICE collectible piece of art you can look at for a while. Designed by fellow Grenoble design firm PNTS, here's a few pictures courtesy of their website:
Seriously worth buying if you like the music (that, again, you can get for free - it's like they guilt trip you in buying the best CD package of the year! And did I mention the CD is the most epic slab of black plastic ever?), PNST also did a flabbergasting packaging for Rien's previous LP, Il Ne Peut Y Avoir De Prédiction Sans Avenir (loving the elongated titles à la Godspeed You! Black Emperor - but IN FRENCH). Pictures still courtesy of the PNTS website - awesome people, I'm telling you!):
Unfortunately, this record is out of print. Still good though, and still freely downloadable on the label's website - consider donating (shameless advertisement for other people, yes - least I can do after getting all their records and borrowing pictures).
The fourth reason, and the most important one: "3" contains pretty damn good sounds. It's not at all your usual post-rock record - these people are willing to experiment with sounds as much as motorik-ly repeating one with minimalist style. On this EP, Rien plays with layers, which, if they sometimes seem conflicting or clashing with the foundation of the song at first, are completely integrated and natural by the end of it. You will come to damn these people, because this record, at 25 minutes and 18 seconds, is about a third of what it should be. Then you will remember what you read on the label's website: 3 is the first of three records, that will come out until 2014, when the band Rien will end (in Japan, apparently?).
What I'm wondering is: How the hell am I going to wait?
JNCT
...
PS: bonus reason: you can make so many puns with this band's name. It's like the fun never stops.
edit: reading my own post makes me feel like I wrote an ad for that record. I tried changing a few things to make this purely subjective post seem more nuanced, but I did really love "3". Considering you can listen to it for free, you shouldn't read any of my nonsense and go directly to the label's website to make you own opinion.
If anyone from Teepee records ever reads this (secretly hoping it happens), how do you do it? How do you manage to be so endlessly right about the bands you sign? Sampler: Nebula, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Ancestors, Sleep, Karma To Burn, High On Fire, Imaad Wasif, Titan, Weird Owl, Witch, Sweet Apple, Hopewel... They've been doing a nice job.
The one of interest here is Earthless. They probably listened to Agitation Free's At The Cliffs Of The River Rhine a bunch of times (or they should) because they share a few things: the abscence of vocals (although their cover of the Groundhog's "Cherry Red" proves that if they needed vocals, they could deliver them) and a fondness for epic sonic paintings. Where Earthless separates from the path drawn by their European musical forefathers is however quite obvious. Indeed, Earthless is a power trio of the best possible faction, where Agitation Free involved 5 members, including a couple of guitarists.
Therefore, it all falls on extremely inspired guitarist Isaiah Mitchell's shoulders to provide Earthless with the otherwordly sounds their band name calls for. The rhythm section will perfectly lock in on every tasty groove they find, with Mitchell first doubling the bass lines, then shooting off in inspired guitaristic tangents that are reminiscent not only of the overcopied Hendrix, Iommi and other Gilmours, but also of Manuel Göttsching's work in Ash Ra Tempel, Louis Dambra from Sir Lord Baltimore, or Ax Genrich (Guru Guru). His prolific use of delay combined with, let's admit it, glorious vacuum tube distortion, should also make the day of anyone with some taste for interesting guitar tones.
The hour and thirty-one minutes of music on this double LP (each of which is one song) is, according to drummer Mario Rubalcaba, a "Heavy, Loud, Sonic mind melt". Which could let a few wonder if these three basement incense burners know where they're going.
They don't.
...but if you were lost somewhere in between the Biir nebula and the Vyydbürnar constellation, would you have any idea where you want to go...?
1) Agitation Free: Live At The Cliffs Of River Rhine (also called Live '74)
2008, Revisited Records
Mentioned in an earlier post, Agitation Free's Live At The Cliffs Of River Rhine (recorded live during a radio-concert at the WDR in Cologne, February 2, 1974) has a number of qualities that make it essential if you are at all interested in improvised or instrumental music.
First of all, Agitation Free is a west-German outfit formed in 1967. According to Allmusic, "Agitation Free were a fixture of Berlin's art-rock scene, performing with like-minded bands such as Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul and Guru Guru". I'm not sure I approve of the "art-rock" term, but they definitely were part of an extremely active and productive scene that mostly took what the Anglophone world was doing at that time and made it... hmm... better.
Have you ever listened to the Grateful Dead and thought... "this could be so much better if they just decided to not sing" or "that guitar solo was great... until it went farther than it should have" ?
Well, there isn't a note on this record will not melt through your brain like butter on a warm toast. Where Led Zeppelin's "How The West Was Won" live sounds so good because they cranked the amps a tad and every song sounds approximately seventeen times more powerful than the studio version, Agitation Free stick to their clean studio sounds (if not turn the drive down a notch) and take you along a wordless ride from the German countryside to the Orion nebula. When they do, like my friend JB would say, "kick it into overdrive", such as on "Laila", you gain a new appreciation of what creamy saturation brings you. Some people use it on every song, its when you only use it from time to time that you realize how good it is.
"Throughout The Moods", the first song off this record, is a thirteen and a half minutes long jam that will not be found on any other Agitation Free record. Just for that, this album is worth hunting down (try Revisited Records) . Swirling keyboards, long bass notes, cymbal rattles... taking their time to introduce the mood their set is going to have, the Agitation slowly focuses over a slow drum groove, swirling oscillations on a synthesizer transforming this bucolic improvisation into an otherwordly combination (with every instrument progressively joining in on the smooth spaciness). Agitation Free is one of the few German bands from that era that truely deserved to be called Kosmische.
