Mogwai Interview

Before all the members joined up to form Mogwai, what were your musical backgrounds, all in dodgy grunge bands?

We all had quite differing tastes that converged at certain points. It's probably quite a good thing that this was the case as it's nice to draw from many influences. The names of the bands were things like Dead Cat Motorbike and The Stunt Vicars.  

Once all the members ended up in the same room, what caused the ‘Mogwai Sound’, was it a love of loud melodies or just a strange chemical interaction with one another?

The points of convergence I was on about were the starting points. I know Stuart and Dominic liked The God Machine and Slint. John and Stuart liked The Velvet Underground so the noisiness was probably going to be present in the songs. It's hard to know why bands sound like they do I suppose. 

Guitars, Amps, Effects Pedals – what are some of the units that will always be found in the Mogwai setup?  

The Boss delay pedal was, until the last album actually, very common on our records but we made a decision not to use them much to see what would happen, we have less well known delay pedals as well now but I can't remember their names. The distortions are often EHX or homemade (not by us). Tremolo pedals are always handy too.  

Explain how the studio recording process works for you – a jam until something comes out or locked away for months looking for that killer riff?   

Killer Riff? Mogwai? No chance. That's why we don't get into the charts because we don't have any of them! The writing is done by 4 of us and usually separately. We send each other mp3's or Logic projects and we add to them until we all get together in Glasgow and rehearse for a month or two then we go and record for a month (usually) and mix for a 3 weeks to a month. Things change right up to the last day so it's quite a tumult. 

Of course there’s a fair bit of technology and keys in your set up too, not just a wall of guitar amps. What’s some of your favourite geeky tech gear?  

For Electric Barryland, I have Muse Receptors filled up with loads of plug-ins by all the good software companies. I use Kontakt a lot these days and the last album had loads of AppliedAcousticsSystems synths on it, especially Ultra Analog. I also have a Dave Smith Polyevolver which is absolutely brilliant and I'm also using an old Juno-60 a lot more these days too. I think one of my favourite things is my old rackmounted Roland Vocoder SVC-350. 

Dominic has a ridiculously solid bass sound live and recorded. How the devil does he achieve his sound?  

I am not 100% sure on what he uses but he does have an Avalon valve pre-amp which he really likes and he quite likes Orange Amps or Matamps when we can bring them with us (they are super heavy). It took years to get something that he is very happy with, I think. 

Playing live the band is very tight but it seems each musician has a place to improvise, do you tend to throw in the odd piece to keep things (and the rest of the band) on their toes? 

I know I do but only on certain songs that are open to it. A lot of our music is quite strict in what you can or can't do with it so you have to use good judgement. A lot depends on how much wine has been consumed, sadly. 

After having being together as a band for many years, how do you find inspiration to create a new album and a revised sound? 

The constant fear of unemployment or bad employment is most definitely an inspiration. We like to play as a band and we get bored by ourselves quickly so we always like to try something new.  

The world ‘beautiful’ is often used to describe your music. How would you describe Mogwai in 3 words?  

Instrumental, Ageing, Scottish.

Lastly, for you young rockers out there, any tips for young bands looking to hit the big time?  

Work about 5 times harder than you think you should and try to find extremely understanding girlfriends/boyfriends. This is not easy but possible. Try not to hit the "big time" because you might stick around longer than most bands, just play good music that has something different about it. Don't let people tell you what to do. Except me, I know everything. 

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You can visit Mogwai's website at www.mogwai.co.uk.