Well it has the excellent sound of Party Dozen to kick it off so what have you got to lose? There’s a rather nice Mogwai track on there as well, Mogwai are one of those bands that are always kind of rather nice, this is an early taste of their January 2025 album The Bad Fire. What are we talking about? Well this year’s Temporary Residence Ltd sampler album that you can download for free via the label’s Bandcamp page
Elsewhere on the sampler, you’ve got some Beak> some restrained loud/quietness from Envy, nine minutes of gentle Post Rock build up from Mono that might excite you more than it excites me, there’s June McDoom, a rather refined understated piece of goodness from William Basinski, some Akira Kosemura & Lawrence English and hey look, we’re talking about a free download smapler, the idea being that you downloads it and sample some of the New York label’s recent releases, you don’t need us to review it although the Nero track is probably our favourite besides the brilliant attack of that Party Dozen album opener. Or maybe the almost nine minutes of Maserati that is the eleventh and final track on the sampler is our favourite? Go sample it, you don’t need our words, music reviews are so last century…
Previously…
Actually there’s another track from that new Mogwai album to be found on Bandcamp right now, a track that is a lot more than just ‘nice’, dare we say Lion Rumpus actually rocks in the properly progressive way you want them to be? Dare we say we’re looking forward to the album now? Dare we say the first track is growing on us with every play? Far more than jsut nice this time maybe?
“The arrival of a new Mogwai album – their eleventh – is cause for great celebration. The album’s title, The Bad Fire, is a working-class Glaswegian term for Hell. It reflects the difficult time that members of the band were going through. New to the studio was American producer John Congleton, known for his work with Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Rós, John Grant and pretty much everyone in between. Congleton’s work can be heard on the album’s three singles. The album opener “God Gets You Back” sounds like Daft Punk being hunted by My Bloody Valentine, while “Fanzine Made Of Flesh” sounds like a victory parade for a baby yeti; and “Lion Rumpus” does actually sound like a lion rumpus. The music of Mogwai is a difficult thing to describe, but an easy thing to experience. At punishing volume, it can annihilate your body, leaving you as little more than a head which should by rights fall helplessly to the ground. Yet the music contains an updraft, a sense of beauty encased in the onslaught. This holds you up, suspended and empowered, reminding you that paradise is your birthright. This is especially true of The Bad Fire. It may have been created in dark conditions, but all that is transcended by the act of four musicians working together here, now, in the moment – the only place where Mogwai exist”.
The new Mogwai album is released January 24, 2025
THE ORGAN 