Mogwai have been shaking the foundations of live music venues across the world for 30 years now.
Their debut single, Tuner/Lower, was released in 1996 and they quickly earned a reputation for their punishingly loud gigs, with anybody who has seen them live able to share war stories about feeling their ribcage reverberate and seeing other attendees get caught out by sudden sonic explosions.
That makes listening to Mogwai a brilliant way to put your hi-fi to the test – and these 10 tracks are a great place to start.
Mogwai Fear Satan
Perhaps the quintessential Mogwai track, the beauty of Fear Satan is the way that it builds.
Based around a simple guitar motif and propelled by Martin Bulloch’s urgent drumming, it’s the perfect closer to the band’s debut album, 1997’s Young Team, and a real statement of intent.
Fully instrumental, as the majority of Mogwai songs are, it adds layers of guitar before stripping everything back to a delicate flute melody – the calm before the storm.
When everything kicks in, you’ll have a brilliant test for how well your system handles sudden shifts, from sonic serenity to all-out attack.
My Father My King
For the first minute or so after pressing play on My Father My King, you might wonder whether you’ve forgotten to turn on your amp, or accidentally sat on the mute button, because the single guitar line that begins it is that quiet. But that’s what makes it such a great test of the dynamic range of your hi-fi – and part of what makes it such a classic Mogwai track.
Based on an ancient Jewish hymn called Avinu Malkeinu, and recorded with the late, great Steve Albini in 2001, My Father My King builds up layers of guitar, viola and cello to a crescendo of noise that will make that peaceful intro seem like much more than 20 minutes ago.
Remurdered
Mogwai have never been afraid to look beyond the guitar, bass and drums to give their songs an extra dimension, but 2014’s Rave Tapes leaned further into the idea than any of its predecessors.
Its lead single, Remurdered, is perhaps the best example of this willingness to experiment, with a lead synth line that should sound suitably ominous in the right hands, before mutating into something altogether more energetic about halfway through. Reproduced with the right amount of gusto it’ll almost be enough to make you do something very few Mogwai songs can: dance.
Dial: Revenge
Dial: Revenge, from 2001’s Rock Action, prominently features two things that are relatively rare on a Mogwai song: untreated vocals and acoustic guitar.
The band recruited Gruff Rhys from the Super Furry Animals to provide the former, and the delicate finger-picking of the latter provides the perfect folky foundations for his gentle singing voice, which should be communicated with tangible vulnerability.
All of the lyrics are in Welsh so, unless you’re one of fewer than a million people worldwide who can speak the language, the vocals here function more as a secondary instrumental melody than something to sing along to.
Ether
As well as 11 studio albums, Mogwai have also recorded original scores for numerous films and TV shows, including a 2016 documentary about the nuclear era called Atomic – Living in Dread and Promise. Ether is its opening track, and through the right system should sound like the dawning of a new age.
The hopeful brass and twinkling synth give it a similar feeling to the opening section of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (commonly known as the theme tune to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey), although the crescendo that Ether builds to is classic Mogwai, with a wall of guitars that should sound suitably imposing if reproduced with sufficient scale.
Friend of the Night
If you asked 100 Mogwai fans which musical instrument they most associate with the band you’d struggle to find one who didn’t say the guitar, but some of their best-loved songs are built around a different string instrument.
Friend of the Night, the sixth track on 2006’s Mr Beast, is based around a piano riff that should sound rich and commanding, but there’s a whole lot more going on here than just tickling ivories. This is a multi-layered track that will sound intricately composed on a good system, and like a cacophonous mess on a bad one.
No Survivors
Mogwai’s most recent soundtrack release was for The Bombing of Pan Am 103, a six-part BBC series about the deadliest terrorist attack in British history, which occurred in the skies over Scotland in December 1988.
Given the subject matter it’s no surprise that No Survivors is filled with foreboding. That’s the overriding feeling you should get from the chiming guitar that floats above the wandering bassline for the first half of the track, before a sinister-sounding organ appears and gradually morphs into something that is reminiscent of emergency sirens.
If you’re not experiencing a real sense of dread by the end of this one it’s time to head to our Best Buys and pick out some better kit.
Coolverine
The first half of Coolverine is fairly Mogwai-by-numbers stuff: a gently descending guitar riff over some stop-start drums, with the trademark shimmery guitars and blossoming synths, but if you want a test of how your system deals with bass it’s one of the best tracks in the band’s catalogue.
Dominic Aitchison’s playing is prominent from the very beginning of Coolverine, but it’s not until the latter half of the song that it starts to become challenging. What starts as a fairly serene part soon picks up the pace significantly, and in the wrong hands all those bass notes will quickly merge together into a low-end gloop.
Fanzine Made of Flesh
Just the latest in a very long line of bizarrely titled Mogwai tracks (other examples include The Sun Smells Too Loud, Hugh Dallas (named after a former football referee from Scotland), and I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School, Fanzine Made of Flesh is perhaps the closest Mogwai have ever come to writing a pop song.
Guitarist and de facto band spokesman Stuart Braithwaite described it as “a cross between ABBA, Swervedriver and Kraftwerk”, and while that’s quite the concoction of influences, you can kind of hear what he means.
With a bedrock of distorted guitar, arpeggiated synths, and a keyboard part that runs almost parallel to the treated vocals, there’s a lot here for your system to separate and position precisely within the soundstage.
Ceiling Granny
Mogwai might have been right at the centre of the post-rock boom, but sometimes there are no prefixes required to describe their music – and Ceiling Granny is the perfect example of that.
A highlight of 2021’s As The Love Continues, the band’s first and only number-one album so far, Ceiling Granny is built around a relentless, crunchy riff that gives it a more energetic, early Smashing Pumpkins feel than Mogwai’s trademark sound.
It also gives drummer Martin Bulloch a good excuse to really give it some on his kit, and while it’s great on record, like every song on this list, it’s even better live.
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