Mogwai
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait

Imagine lying on your bed, you're about to fall asleep but you just can't because these days it's really difficult due to the oppressive heat. Here's a suggestion for you: insert this album, which I would describe as celestial, into your CD or mp3 player. I started following this band from their last album (Mr. Beast) and I totally fell in love with it. As soon as I read about this documentary on Zidane with Mogwai's soundtrack, I was intrigued with curiosity. Without further ado, put aside your prejudices, as I set out to tell you about the album.

It's a completely instrumental album; earlier I called this work celestial, not for the atmosphere it evokes, but for the quality of the songs and their recording. It starts with Black Spider, a dreamy opener that captivates you at first listen and with its first guitar riff, with its slow, precise, and melancholic pace. Terrific Speech 2 serves as an introduction with its repetitiveness to Wake Up And Go Berserk, a collage of background noises with an acoustic guitar, trying to bring out a melody from the catharsis that this song creates. Terrific Speech 1 is like the other, except that at the end it changes, it almost seems about to explode, but it doesn't, it remains closed in on itself as if to warn the listener that the fireworks will come later. 07-25 takes you on a cloud and shows you the world from above, distant horizons (as they would say), you can try to imagine them, getting emotional, just as this piece knows how to do. Half Time indeed marks the end of the first half...emotional enough? It's not over yet. From I Do Have Weapons to Black Spider 2, it's a continuous meeting with your own conscience, with what we manage to see and feel thanks to these songs, internal landscapes created by our personality.

More than a rock music album, I would define it as a psychiatric session... it looks inside us... the journey begins when I press play... Zidane? The goals remain and that gesture everyone knows, but here it's about MOGWAI...