Mogwai

Glasgow’s Chemikal Underground today announces special edition reissues of two seminal albums by Mogwai - their 1997 debut Mogwai Young Team and its follow up, 1999’s Come On Die Young. The announcement comes 25 years on from the release of Mogwai Young Team, and both albums will be released on 10 February 2023 on coloured vinyl with the remastered Mogwai Young Team album also being released on CD and digital formats.

Mogwai Young Team, originally released in October 1997, has been remastered and refreshed on sky-blue vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve with original artwork, CD and digital. The original recording engineer for the album, Paul Savage, whose production credits include Franz Ferdinand and The Twilight Sad, has remastered the album for this special reissue. Come On Die Young, Mogwai’s iconic second album, is to be reissued on white vinyl presented in a gatefold sleeve with original artwork.

After a brace of critically acclaimed singles and a host of incendiary live shows, there was a palpable sense of anticipation over the release of Mogwai’s debut long player. Despite arriving two and a half decades ago, little has happened since to diminish its impact: stylistically at odds with what was rapidly becoming the fag-end of Britpop, Mogwai Young Team was an obstreperous exercise in dynamics and fury – the unapologetically avant- garde nestled alongside tracks of poignant, delicate beauty.

Recorded in what was soon to become Chemikal Underground’s own Chem19 studios by label owner and The Delgados’ drummer Paul Savage (for the princely sum of £2,000), the sessions were, by the band’s own admission, “turbulent, disorganised and hastily mixed”.

With Mogwai’s ranks having been recently swollen with the addition of Teenage Fanclub, Telstar Ponies and Macrocosmica alumni Brendan O’ Hare, the band recorded the album in a chaotic whirl of creativity, shaven heads, adopted pseudonyms, gang tattoos and distortion pedals.

Mogwai Young Team was met by a breathless wave of critical superlatives: its lack of conventional lyrics did nothing to dilute the power of the album, its emotional articulacy lay in its use of melody, the genuinely transcendent dynamics and its abstract use of vocals (essentially eavesdropped conversations). What could easily have become a case study in po-faced self-importance and post-rock musical snobbery was irrevocably rescued by Mogwai’s dark sense of humour and their generosity with a sarcastically choleric soundbite.

Today the record is no less arresting in its strength and singularity. What has undoubtedly changed however is its context. Here is the precursor to a 25-year and counting international career, at once giving everything and nothing away in all its glorious 64 mins.

Arriving barely 18 months later, in March 1999, with an album cover that referenced The Exorcist and a title scalped from a well-known Glasgow gang slogan, you’d have expected Come On Die Young to be an apocalypse- harbouring, pre-millennial assault on the senses. Instead, what arrived was a darkly elegiac – surprisingly restrained – response to the aural fireworks of their debut.

Recorded and mixed by Dave Fridmann at his Tarbox Road Studios in Upstate New York the previous year, Come On Die Young begins with a recording of Iggy Pop eulogising the genius of punk rock and ends with a track entitled ‘Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist’. This thoughtful and irreverent diptych enclosed an hour of music that was as beautiful as it was blistering and as poignant as it was unpredictable: preconceptions of what to expect from a Mogwai album, disassembled at a stroke.

Last year, Mogwai’s tenth studio album As The Love Continues opened at number 1 on the UK Official Albums Chart, their first number one album. Alongside the consistent output of studio albums, the band have broadened their portfolio: Most recently, Stuart Braithwaite released his acclaimed autobiography, Spaceships Over Glasgow: Mogwai, Mayhem and Misspent Youth, and the band provided the soundtrack for the Apple TV+ show Black Bird, starring Taron Egerton, the latest in a line of acclaimed and innovative scores for film and TV.

Mogwai - Mogwai Young Team tracklisting
1. Yes! I am A Long Way From Home
2. Like Herod
3. Katrien
4. Radar Maker
5. Tracy
6. Summer (Priority Version)
7. With Portfolio
8. R U Still In 2 It
9. A Cheery Wave From Stranded Youngsters
10. Mogwai Fear Satan

Mogwai - Come On Die Young tracklisting
1. Punk Rock:
2. Cody
3. Helps Both Ways
4. Year 200 Non-Compliant Cardia
5. Kappa
6. Waltz For Aidan
7. May Nothing But Happiness Come Through
Your Door
8. Oh! How The Dogs Stock
9. Ex-Cowboy
10.. Chocky
11. Christmas Steps
12. Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist

Mogwai 2022/2023 live dates

(*support from Brainiac, **support from Rev Magnetic, ***support from bdrmm )

Tue 20 Dec 2022 - Scotland, Aberdeen Music Hall**
Wed 21 Dec 2022 - Scotland, Edinburgh Usher Hall***
Thu 22 Dec 2022 - Scotland, Glasgow, Barrowland Ballroom***
Fri 23 Dec 2022 - Scotland, Glasgow Barrowland Ballroom**
Fri 10 Feb 2023 - England, Manchester Albert Hall*
Sat 11 Feb 2023 - England, Leeds O2 Academy*
Sun 12 Feb 2023 - England, Gateshead Sage*

Tue 14 Feb 2023 - England, Nottingham Rock City*
Wed 15 Feb 2023 - England, BathThe Forum*
Thu 16 Feb 2023 - Wales, Cardiff Great Hall*
Fri 17 Feb 2023 - England, Brighton Brighton Dome*
Sat 18 Feb 2023 - England, Cambridge Corn Exchange*
Sun 19 Feb 2023 - England - Birmingham, O2 Institute*