Mogwai

Nine studio albums, a live album and four compilations, four soundtracks, a record label, and a few blown PAs and dislodged pieces of ceiling over uncountable gigs. Over the 24 years since they formed with rehearsals rattling Stuart Braithwaite's living room, Mogwai might have become one of the most important groups of a fragmented but increasingly potent British musical underground, but they've refused to sit back and rest on their laurels. Over 24 years their one constant has been of a mastery of dynamics, an embracing both of power and minimalism, and a willingness to experiment with new instrumentations and technology. Within that though, one of the most recognisable sonic identities in contemporary music unites the songs as disparate of graceful sung moments like Travel Is Dangerous or epic Black Sabbath temper tantrum My Father My King, the shimmering, or the stately atmosphere of I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead... The Mogwai of 2020 is a very different group to the four kids who, in 1996, released their debut single to a musical climate suffering the appalling hangover of late Britpop. Since debut album Young Team the group have always kept their eyes on the future, playing different sets mostly of new material on each night of their never-ending tours. In a commercial climate that hardly favours independent artists operating outside the mainstream, Mogwai have always led by example, doing it themselves, where they can.