Mogwai
My Father, My King (2001)

review by: Matthew Scrivner
Date: 5/10/02

Mogwai play the cinema soundtrack to a brain hemmoraging on its own joy. My Father, My King is my favorite of their releases--basically it's an EP, you can pick it up for under $10 bucks but probably won't find it at a megachain or your local Walmart--it's a little to subculture for corporate america, apparently. In actuality it's a single, twenty-five minute long song that articulates an epic sense of dread, anticipation, joy, and fury. Mogwai manages to balance the simplest of chord progressions and repetitions with the most complex layers of feedback, distortion, bass, and drums, and the blend is mighty. Picture ancient gods raining cold mist on the Scottish highlands and then suddenly blasting it with the magma of wrath. My elderly asian neighbor downstairs, Mr. Wu, craps his pants when I play this, almost punches a hole clean through the ceiling with his broomstick pounding--but with sonic orgasmical rock of this magnitude, broomstick banging blends right in. Buy it, all of you. Turn it up to 10, and wallow in the audio tsunami.