Scottish instrumental outfit Mogwai have always championed remixes, whether it’s their own tracks being re imagined, or periodically twiddling with the labours of others. Their 1998 remix album Kicking a Dead Pig felt like a game changer, predominantly featuring remixes of their Young Team album, it boasted the likes of Hood, Arab Strap, Alec Empire and My Bloody Valentine reworking their tunes. Rather than reimagining music from their album, it felt like the remixers were given free reign and had in fact re imagined music itself. Even today it still feels cutting edge. But back in the late 90’s it provided a unique insight into Mogwai’s desire to push sonic boundaries at every opportunity.
Whilst Mogwai have continued to evolve over the years from their post rock origins, periodically introducing vocals, and more recently scoring the incredible French drama Les Revenants (The Returned), they have never lost their interest in the remix form. This EP brings together 3 unreleased pieces, offcuts from their recent Rave Tapes album, as well as three remixes from some of the more compelling electronic producers around. That’s the thing about Mogwai, they’ve always had great taste in remixers.
They begin with the upbeat poppy offcut, Teenage Exorcists. It’s much closer to the likes of Swervedriver than their own ponderous post rock origins – it even has vocals. It’s surprisingly catchy, not only demonstrating their versatility but perhaps also leaving some evidence of how life might have been like if they had wanted to be Teenage Fanclub.
The second piece, History Day owes more to their recent scoring work, gentle with plenty of space, a touch of piano that still manages to erupt into squalling guitar. HMP Shaun William Ryder meanwhile is typical Mogwai, building, churning, heavy and highly emotive – in short Mogwai doing what they do best, and perhaps this is why it didn’t make it onto Rave Tapes.
Blanck Mass, aka Benjamin John Power from the Fuck Buttons produced one of the most searing challenging and beautiful documents of electronic noise with his debut album in 2011 (on Mogwai’s Rock Action label). Here he turns the chugging instrumental Remurdered, an admittedly rather plodding and forgettable piece until the synth kicks in midway, into a doomy electro funk dance floor explosion – improving upon it dramatically.
The highlight though is the woozy, electro psychedelic wash that is No Medicine For Regret, from Pye Corner Audio, the mysterious and incredibly prolific producer who’s world is a kind of amorphous mid 70’s electro cloud. Beginning as washed out electro shoegaze, midway he brings in an urgent sequencer and before long we’re up to our necks in an incredible wash of dreamy synthetic dance floor haze.
Finally German producer Nils Frahm gets solo melancholic piano on the vocodered The Lord is Out of Control, slowing it down, before erupting post rock style into controlled blasts of transcendental electro noise. It’s strange, yet on Mogwai’s original I can’t hear any piano, though perhaps it was hidden underneath the bluster. Regardless Frahm’s piece, whilst not necessarily altering the tone of the original too much, is quite strange, mixing a kind of weary vulnerability with periodic bursts of noisy electronic new age bliss. It’s a very curious amalgamation, yet somehow it works. Much like this EP as a whole.
