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Rating: It's Ragnarök. It's the apocalypse. It's armageddon. It's the end of days. Nothing will be the same as before. The moon, fearful, becomes dim and loses a piece of itself while slowly creating an enchanting atmosphere. An extraordinary setting for what, in hindsight, proved to be an exceptional event. A Roman amphitheater, archaeological excavations, a night heavy with humidity, and the moon, just shy of full, playing hide and seek.
I will give little weight to what came before because Giardini di Mirò were decent but didn’t impress me, and the thing I remembered most about De Rosa was their marked Scottish accent, while the rest slipped past me without leaving the slightest mark. But afterward, folks, AFTER... everything ceased to be as it was. Time and space ceased to matter and there were only music, lights, and beats.
A folk ballad precedes the entrance of the five Scotsmen, a bit disconcerting, but they promptly set things right "Yes, I Am A Long Way From Home"... and will take the audience even further, captivated. The second place goes to "Friend of the Night", evocative as never before. It gradually strips down until only the piano remains, the other instruments stop, as does my heart, caught somewhere in my throat. The lights blend with the stage smoke, blue, green, fuchsia, and stealthily a fog worthy of the deepest Po Valley begins to fall, further contributing to making everything even more magical. "Travel Is Dangerous" emphasizes how perfect the acoustics are and the music comes from everywhere, completely surrounding the spectators. The sharp beats of the drums echo precise in my chest (and in everyone's, I imagine), somewhere undefined between the sternum and the left collarbone. I have a second heart and it beats. "I Know You Are But What Am I?", amidst the delicate notes of the xylophone and the force of distortion; this is Mogwai, and we are happy people. And still, between recent and historic tracks: "Glasgow Mega Snake", which rises powerful, with the guitars building a sonic wall, brick by brick, "Acid Food", "You Don't Know Jesus", "Ratts of the Capital". Never a dull moment, not a single flaw. "We're No Here" arrives attached to the previous track, without the feedback giving a single moment of respite, and the guitars, thick and greasy, ooze distortion from every single chord. Besides the musical magic, there's also the scenic one, and the lights, expertly handled throughout the concert, with a sudden glare reveal the pines lining the stage, swallowed by the shroud of smoke and fog.
The feedback, naturally, accompanies the exit of Mogwai from the stage. Time to breathe and they return, to gift us with "Mogwai fear Satan" (though I think the opposite is more plausible) and "2 Rights Make 1 Wrong", a slightly underwhelming ending for what has been a magnificent concert.
I sit for a couple more minutes, dumbfounded and a bit incredulous. I stand up, stretch, and check that I still exist: my head is still on my shoulders, my ears languish in silence, my heart is back to being just one beating in my chest. The fog is still thick over the excavations, giving us the last moments of a lunar landscape, before returning to normality and before this concert begins to seem like only a beautiful dream.
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