Tickets are now available to see Mogwai at The Garage!
Along with the special edition reissues of two seminal albums by Mogwai – their 1997 debut ‘Mogwai Young Team’ and its follow up, 1999’s ‘Come On Die Young.’ Mogwai announce two shows at The Grace in 2023!
The announcement comes 25 years on from the release of Mogwai Young Team, and both albums will be released on 10 February 2023 on coloured vinyl with the remastered Mo gwai Yo ung Team album also being released on CD and digital formats. The groundbreaking Mo gwai Yo ung Team, originally released in October 1997, has been remastered and refreshed on coloured vinyl, CD and digital. Housed in a gatefold sleeve with original artwork, the sky-blue vinyl will come with a digital download code. The original recording engineer for the album, Paul Savage, whose production credits include Franz Ferdinand and The Twilight Sad, has remastered the album for this special reissue.
After a brace of critically acclaimed singles and a host of incendiary live shows, there was a palpable sense of anticipation over the release of Mogwai’s debut long player. Despite arriving two and a half decades ago, little has happened since to diminish its impact: stylistically at odds with what was rapidly becoming the fag-end of Britpop, Mo gwai Yo ung Team was an obstreperous exercise in dynamics and fury – the unapologetically avantgarde nestled alongside tracks of poignant, delicate beauty.
Recorded in what was soon to become Chemikal Underground’s own Chem19 studios by label owner and The Delgados’ drummer Paul Savage (for the princely sum of £2,000), the sessions were, by the band’s own admission, “turbulent, disorganised and hastily mixed”.
With Mogwai’s ranks having been recently swollen with the addition of Teenage Fanclub, Telstar Ponies and Macrocosmica alumni Brendan O’ Hare, the band recorded the album in a chaotic whirl of creativity, shaven heads, adopted pseudonyms, gang tattoos and distortion pedals.
Mo gwai Yo ung Team was met by a breathless wave of critical superlatives: its lack of conventional lyrics did nothing to dilute the power of the album, its emotional articulacy lay in its use of melody, the genuinely transcendent dynamics and its abstract use of vocals (essentially eavesdropped conversations).
What could easily have become a case study in po-faced self-importance and post-rock musical snobbery was irrevocably rescued by Mogwai’s dark sense of humour and their generosity with a sarcastically choleric soundbite. Today the record is no less arresting in its strength and singularity. What has undoubtedly changed however is its context. Here is the precursor to a 25-year and counting international career, at once giving everything and nothing away in all its glorious 64 mins.
