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Rating:
It's night, and I'm on my way home. In my hand is the Mogwai CD. Suddenly, my attention is caught by the CD I'm holding; it has turned an intense blue. It's the reflection from a neon light. I'm surprised. The cover, unlike what you see in magazines, is mirrored, but I didn't think it would reflect so well. It's unreplicable with a printer.
There are no other instructions on the CD: you open the two-page booklet and again, there's just silver. Enclosed is a white sheet explaining that the CD also has a demo version of Steinberg's Cubase and fragments to remix the first song on the CD, “Hunted by a Freak.”
The first song disappoints me; almost immediately, a bothersome vocoder kicks in, then it opens up into space rock, ending with electronic effects put there just so (to create a bit of atmosphere?). Mogwai's records have always been defined by an underground power, it feels like being in the middle of the sea with the waves taking you up and down. But these are long, lazy, slow waves. They don't scare you. You feel their strength. The second song sticks with me only for the ungrammatical title “Moses? I amn’t”. Moses... references to the sea are evidently well rooted in the band's imagery.
In “Kids Will be Skeletons,” a flangered guitar appears and a melody that seems to be lifted straight from The Cure, that rise and fall like in “Letter to Elise,” and they make you smile. Beautiful, but what are they doing here? "Killing all the Flies" brings back the vocoder; the end is great with the flies rebelling and attacking. “I Know You Are but What am I?" is introduced by a minimal piano.
But the piece of class comes only at the end of the album. “Stop coming to my House” is a storm of reverbs, a devastating crescendo with an indescribable distorted drum. But evaluated overall, the album leaves me puzzled, though majestic at times, but when you delve into minimal post-rock, small errors (like the vocoder) mark the album heavily. Here: at times, it feels messy.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
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