Mogwai
Atomic

LA RECENSIONE

August 6, 1945 - Hiroshima
August 2015 - Seventy years after the "ultimate" nuclear fission, Mogwai create the soundtrack for the BBC documentary “Atomic: Living In Dread And Promise,” directed by Mark Cousin.
April 2016 - The new work from the Scots is released, their third original soundtrack after Zidane and Les Revenants.

Mogwai seem to have a very clear idea of what is good and what is evil. Good is our beloved star that shines on the cover and illuminates our solar system. Nothing would exist without that miraculous thermonuclear fusion that has been self-sustaining for billions of years; there wouldn’t be musicanidi to write this review and you, beyond the screen, to read this page. Evil is the uncontrolled atomic fission, that artificial chain reaction that unleashes devastating and lethal destructive energy.

The soundtrack is an elliptical journey around the sun, it is a revolutionary motion where Man and the planet Earth are the point of departure and arrival. Mogwai move along astral trajectories already seen and heard, but with a touch and mastery that would make anyone envious. Their accumulative crescendos are a trademark, although the sonic explosions (the famous tearing of the eardrums) are rare and controlled ("Ether" and "Tzar" above all). With "Scram," the onboard electronics start to take over, abandoning the Earth adrift, bleeding dead and wounded, the atmosphere starts to thin, oxygen is lacking. The interplanetary journey becomes majestic, asteroids seem to brush past them, they are only stardust that doesn't scratch their spacecraft. "U-235" is pure 70s electronics indebted to the oxygen of J.M Jarre, it’s a pure journey, nostalgic like a farewell. Of all the emptiness surrounding them, "Pripyat" is full, the German cosmic electronics of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream empower "Weak Force." The call to terrestrial origins, however, is just around the corner, “Are You a Dancer” is a dive into their nineties, suspended in strings, on a rarefied drum and a timid guitar. "Fat Man" is the return to base, the world is still here, tired, sad, and melancholy like an old drunk on a bench.

Atomic is yet another great album with the guitars left in the attic, made with keyboards and a measured use of electronics, imposing as the infinite depth of the universe, delicate and soft, mysterious and threatening like interstellar silence. Atomic is an "elementary" album, it is solid, liquid, and gaseous like all the matter surrounding us, it is a hot fusion of all Mogwai's sound experiences, it is their cosmic declination of music.

Atomic is a journey; it's up to you to find the time and desire to climb aboard. Au revoir... I'm already departing again.