Tomorrow's Music Today: Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite

IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE that seasons affect rock 'n' roll, but ask Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite, and he'll tell you that as summer approaches the band's live set begins to take on a different form.

During the summer months, the Scottish instrumental group makes a slew of festival appearances all over the world from the Bad Bonn Kilbi festival in Switzerland to the upcoming Sonic Summer festival in Japan.

But as a band known for elaborately constructed, softly sweeping melodies as much as the explosive, distorted climaxes that generally follow, attempting to lull an audience with a gradually building crescendo can be a challenge when a few other, equally loud, performances are happening at the same time.

"You're trying to have a tender moment and suddenly you can hear, you know, the performance or something from the back. It's not ideal," said the group's guitarist, calling from his home a few miles south of Glasgow city.

After having too many mellow moments crushed, the band now refrains from their trademark soft/loud pattern and just sticks with the heavy stuff when performing at festivals.

From the perspective of one of its founding members, the best place to experience Mogwai — which is named after the adorable Furby-like creatures in the movie "Gremlins" and is also Cantonese for "demon" — is in a club setting.

"I probably prefer our own shows because everything is under your control," Braithwaite said. "You know, you've got the sound check and all that stuff. There's nothing very amazing at festivals. I think it's more reliably good at club shows."
                           
Wherever they're playing, Mogwai's sound is one that has baffled rock categorizers since their start six studio albums ago in the mid-'90s. Most often, they are labeled as "post-rock," a slightly ambiguous term that describes instrumental-based rock music that goes outside of the traditional verse-chorus-verse approach and usually diminishes vocal roles.

But Braithwaite maintains that it's a lot simpler than that.

"I think we did a few singles before anyone ever heard the word 'post-rock.' We just saw what we were doing as just as a regular rock band," he said. "We just didn't have much singing because none of us are very good singers... It's weird though because when we first heard people say 'post-rock' it wasn't really bands like us that they were talking about. It was more of a fusion between dance and rock music or something. It's just come to mean music, club music, with no singing."

When Mogwai's five members convene, their goal isn't to make something that sounds Mogwai-esque, Braithwaite said — it's to make music with merit.

"I think the only pressure is to ourselves, to make music that we like," he said. "We just get together and play and if it sounds good then we keep it."

It's an ethos that sounds more present-rock than post-rock. Which is fine by Braithwaite.

"I never want rock to stop," he said with a laugh. "I love rock 'n roll."

Photo Courtesy Mogwai