The Scottish post-rock collective Mogwai has been active on the music scene since the mid-1990s. The band is currently preparing their tenth studio album “As The Love Continues”.
Mogwai were pioneers of the post-rock genre, despite disliking the term profusely, and have been extremely prolific in terms of recorded material. The band was formed in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1995 by guitarist Stuart Braithwaite, bassist Dominic Aitchison and drummer Martin Bulloch.
The name “Mogwai” is taken from the name of the creature in the 1984 film Gremlins, but it bears no significance whatsoever. Braithwaite has stated such, saying that “it has no significant meaning and we always intended on getting a better one, but like a lot of other things we never got round to it.” The word “Mogwai” originally comes from the Cantonese word for ‘devil’.
The album “Every Country’s Sun” (2017) confirmed that Mogwai remained a relevant band.
Their songs have also been featured in many TV series such as Sex and the City, Les Revenants, Miami, The Fountain and the award-winning documentaries Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, Lost in France Before the Flood (along with Nine Inch Nails) or the alarming BBC. Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise on the history of nuclear weapons.
Mogwai are to release their new single “Ritchie Sacramento”, the second song to be taken from their forthcoming tenth studio album As The Love Continues. Supported by quietly melodic vocals, “Ritchie Sacramento” oscillates between moments of tranquility and disorder. The track’s video was created within the Unreal Games Engine by director Sam Wiehl, who has previously collaborated with Ladytron, Forest Swords and the Valentino fashion house, and created a whole first person multi level computer game for the song, which then formed the animations and narratives for the video.
Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite says: “Ritchie Sacramento’s title came from a misunderstanding a friend of ours had about how to say Ryuchi Sakamoto. The lyrics were inspired by a story Bob Nastanovich shared about his friend and bandmate David Berman who proclaimed “Rise Crystal Spear” as he threw a shovel at a sports car. The song is dedicated to all the musician friends we’ve lost over the years.”
“Ritchie Sacramento” follows previous single “Dry Fantasy”, a celestial song built around a reverberating synth repetition. The track is accompanied by a video directed by Vaj.Power which draws interspersing images of blossoming flowers with the gnarled surfaces of a distant planet.
NMR (foto: Rock Action)
