Scottish rockers Mogwai have been delivering their own brand of towering soundscapes and minimal reflections for two-plus decades.
With the release today (1 September) of their ninth studio album, the beautifully intense 'Every Country’s Sun', the band have again delivered a record as easily consumed within the confines of a pair of headphones as in the open at a festival under a cloak of stars.
So how does a band remain relevant for so long? “It's not really an involved answer, but we definitely enjoy what we're doing and we still enjoy each other's company and hanging out and making music together,” the group's bassist Dominic Aitchison says.
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“It isn't anymore complicated than that. Being in a band is not that complicated; it's meant to be fun. I recall a band we knew who was having the worst time and I thought, 'How do you end up in a band that's having no fun? You're clearly doing it wrong if you're not having a good time.'”
That said, you can't be having fun for 22 years; can you? “It's definitely nuts,” admits Dominic.
“Twenty-two years together is a long time. It does blow my mind a wee bit. When we made our first singles, we never had the intention of lasting as long as we have. I don't know... it was our ambition to play at least a local gig [at the start of the band]; to still be going some 20-plus years later is great. I like it.”
On this latest recording project, the band returned to the past reuniting with producer Dave Fridmann, who recorded the group's 'Come On Die Young' (1999) and 'Rock Action' (2001) albums. “It was great. We'd done two albums with David. It'd being 16 years since we'd done the previous one; it was weird walking back into a situation that seemed so familiar after such a long time, but it was good, I really enjoyed it.
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“Dave's studio is in upstate New York in the middle of nowhere and you have to sleep there. So you get up and get stuck into making the record. There are no distractions; it was good.
“We have our studio in Glasgow, so the first couple of records we'd record at our place and you would end up going home at dinner time and read the kids bed-time stories. So we'd never really done a proper day's work recording before. [At Dave's] it gave you no choice other than getting on with it; it's good. You get much more done.”
A band with the experience accrued like Mogwai, is there much still to learn about making an album? “We worked out quickly want works live doesn't always work on an album, so I think one of the main things early on was figuring out or knowing when you're recording don't think about how it's going to sound 'live' but how you're going to play it.
“Record it in a way that's going to sound good and then it doesn't matter what it sounds like live, just do what's best for the song and the situation. But at the same time, our songwriting process hasn't really changed since we started.
"When we get an idea, we'll jam it out and when we've got what we think are a decent enough batch of songs, we'll go for it [record an album].”
