Mogwai today announce their eagerly anticipated ninth studio album, Every Country’s Sun, due for release 1 September on Spunk Records/Caroline Australia in vinyl, CD and digital formats. The record is their first studio album since 2014’s Rave Tapes, and sees them reuniting with producer Dave Fridmann for the first time since 2001’s acclaimed ROCK ACTION LP; Fridmann also worked with the band on Come On Die Young (1999). It was recorded at Fridmann’s Tarbox Road Studios in Cassadaga, New York. The opening track from the record, Coolverine, is available to stream and download from today.
Every Country’s Sun takes two decades of Mogwai’s signature, contrasting sounds – towering intensity, pastoral introspection, synth-rock minimalism, DNA-detonating volume – and distills it, beautifully, into 56 concise minutes of gracious elegance, hymnal trance-rock, and transcenden- tal euphoria. It’s a structural soundscape built from stark foundations up; from a gentle, twinkling, synth-rock spectre to a solid, blown-out, skyward-thrusting obelisk. There’s percussive, dream-state electronics (Coolverine), church organs as chariots of existential fire (Brain Sweeties), tremulous, foreboding bleeping – possibly from a dying android (aka 47). Their most transportive album yet, it also hosts their most fully realised art-pop sing-along of their storied history, Party In The Dark, a head-spinning disco-dream double-helix echoing New Order and The Flaming Lips. This is music as a keep-out chrysalis, protective audio armour through exalting organs and portentous, dissonant guitar fuzz warping at the edges, bending the world inside-out into a reality in which you’d much rather live. The last three songs ascend into explosive exorcism, closing with the colossal title track, its searching intensity whooshing towards infinity in a dazzling cosmic crescendo.
Mogwai – Dominic Aitchison (bass), Stuart Braithwaite (guitar, vocals), Martin Bulloch (drums) and Barry Burns (keyboard, computer, guitar) – formed in Glasgow in 1995, and their output numbers eight studio albums, 13 EPs, two remix albums, two live albums and four compilation albums including 2015’s collection Central Belters. They’ve also contributed soundtracks to an impressive spectrum of cinematic releases (both full soundtracks and contributions): alongside Atomic (a Top 20 UK album in 2016), there’s been consistent acclaim for projects including French TV series Les Revenants (2013) and contributions to Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate change documentary Before The Flood (2016) alongside Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
The band have announced a major world tour. Mogwai’s only confirmed Australian show is at DARK MOFO (Hobart) on Saturday 10th June 2017, 7:30PM.
TRACKLISTING
01 Coolverine
02 Party In The Dark
03 Brain Sweeties
04 Crossing The Road Material
05 aka 47
06 20 Size
07 1000 Foot Fence
08 Don’t Believe The Fife
09 Battered At A Scramble
10 Old Poisons
11 Every Country’s Sun
Pre-Orders https://caroline.lnk.to/EveryCountrysSun
