Mogwai - Live in HK - 18/1/2009
Concert Review by Nick the Bookman

It's the eve of the dawn of a new day in American and global political history. I'm walking home from a Mogwai gig at HITEC. In a few hours Barack Obama is going to be the Most Powerful Man In The World, replacing George W. Bush. It's said that numbers don't lie. Each one is complete, exact and individual in its value. But they can have other equivalent, yet different comparative worth (?). For example: 100 = 212. 2.2 = 1. 8 = 1.* The numbers 56, 44 and 43 have an extra meaning to each other. 56 is the number of American Presidential Inaugurations so far. Barack Obama is the 44th POTUS. He's the 43rd man to hold that post. How come? For that, we go to Cleveland. Specifically Grover Cleveland. A Democrat, he's the only man to achieve two non-consecutive terms of office. He was the 22nd POTUS from 1885-89. And the 24th POTUS between 1893-97. Ended up wildly unpopular. Might even give the Dubyahoo a run for his money in the disapproval ratings. The first mixed race President has a shitpot overflowing with problems. Two wars. A global economic meltdown (the USA is nearly 11 trillion dollars in debt and rising daily). Climate change and other natural disasters. Hostile regimes and rogue states. Fundamental fuckwits overseas and especially at home (hello, Republicans). Their patriotic fan base covers the RED necks, WHITE trash and BLUE noses and they're still sore about being Bushwhacked by most of the electorate last November. What did we do wrong? What's not to like about Sarah Palin, the Caribou Barbie? Aside from being a political neophyte, loose cannon, fundamental Creationist gun nut whose husband is an Alaska Isolationist who favours secession. A grandmother through her underage, unmarried daughter. Though why wedlock should be a barometer for a "good" or "bad" child is beyond me. Surely, biology and genetics is the final arbiter. Don't have your brother's babies. Don't emulate the Royal Families of Europe. Strive for a strong and stable lineage through natural selection and widespread dissemination of DNA. Consensual sex is preferred. (And a happy belated 200th birthday greeting to Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Both men were born within hours of each other on 12/2/1809). Back to Sarah Palin for a moment. This is NOT a cheap shot at her youngest son who has Downs Syndrome. Merely an observation that "God's Blessing" on the state of their union didn't prevent Trick from being born with DS. And he's not paying for anyone else's sins. Excreta eventuates! Considering the complexity involved in growing a baby, it's great that so many of us turn out right. As for John McCain, he's the sacrificial goat. Thrown to the wolves in a splendid gesture of contempt by Bush. A score settling for daring to disagree with the President and for being all the things Dubya can never be. Like a war hero and a bi-partisan maverick. This coupled with the realisation by whoever was using the Republican Party brain cell at the time that the 2008 Election was a no-win situation. Leave the New Kid to clean up our crap, regroup for 2012. White House-train Sarah Palin. Preen, whinge and have prissy fits in an effort to make life tough for the Obama Administration. In other words, the usual politics. Quick plug now. There's a wonderful clip on YouTube called "George W. Bush - eight years in eight minutes." Produced by M-NBC. Says it all, succinctly.

* If you're still having trouble, the answers are Celsius/Fahrenheit. Pounds/kilos. Pints/Gallon. There are others ranging the numerical plains. Happy hunting!

Anyway, I was returning home from Mogwai's second HK gig in about two years. Only found out about their debut after the event. Local band Elf Fatima, who are musical kin under the skin, were the opening act. Mogwai are a Scottish quintet whose career began 13 years ago. They're on tour to promote and perform their sixth and latest release "The Hawk Is Howling". Their music is experimental, electronic, electric and eclectic. They've composed film soundtracks, notably for the documentary about now retired French footballer Zinedane Zidane. I'm up for a night of quiet/loud dynamics intermingled with dissonance and melody. The performance can cause timeshifts in perception. Some of the music might even by created by the mixmeisters at the master console, interacting and shaping the flow of the noise. The gig is a sellout. About 700 people crammed in the auditorium on the third floor of HITEC in Kowloon Bay. ELF Fatima are on tour, so they're absent. There is no opening act. I've caught an early evening MTR to Kowloon Bay. Not as much fun as travelling to Kraftwerk, but that was a special night. Inside the carriage, I spot a young girl frantically trying to text someone. Her phone isn't receiving any signal. Then, "Excuse me. Do you speak English"? (I get asked that question a lot). Quick nod. "Can I borrow your mobile"?. For a moment, I'm really sorry I don't have a phone to lend a damsel in distress, but, you know, they keep exploding and killing people. When they're not frying your nervous system with microwaves. I suggest the Chinese couple next to us. They cheerfully oblige and Sarah (for that's her name) texts her friend Sam to meet her at Exit A in Kowloon Bay. Turns out that Sarah is Scottish and on her way to the gig. She's slender - a Julianne Moore semi lookalike and good company. She hasn't seen Mogwai, despite being a fellow Glaswegian. Off the train, collect Sam - a Chinese girlfriend - and a quick stroll to HITEC. There's never a bus when you need one. It's not a long walk and I've done it over a dozen times for other shows. Arrive safely and bump into Nick B. (fellow Lammaniac of Little Red email fame). The hall is the same one I saw Michael Schenker Group and Strativarious (from Helsinki). True to form, everyone rushes to the front row seats for the best view. Doesn't matter. Even at the back, you're not going to miss anything. I find myself standing next to Regina and Vincent AKA Sno-Blind. Have a good mag about the show. Haven't seen them since their two excellent gigs at Clockenflap at Cyberport and a more ambient gig on the middle floor of Pier 4. They've just played a recent Underground gig as well. If you're reading this Sno-Blind, sorry I couldn't get there. I strained my back and over-medicated myself for the pain. Am looking forward to hearing your new CD. Oh yeah, Sil (?) the drummer for The Sinister Left and a fellow YSW resident, is in attendance. Not surprised to see him here. Spotted him on a recent ferry ride looking admiringly through a big selection of Can CD's. Can are one of the pioneers of Krautrock, along with Amon Duul, Faust, Neu and Ash Ra Tempel. Don't forget the 'tronic boffins either like Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Edgar Froese and Klaus Schulze.

Anyway, Nick has joined me on the walk home. We're discussing the performance and its lysergic chrono-distortion and meander into a general chat about time. How much is there?. What about the Space Time Continuum? What do we mean by time? As a concept, Time is youthful. Our period of existence and civilization covers about 11,000 years, That's one of the longest intervals between cataclysmic Ice Ages to date. Almost everything worthy that has been accomplished by mankind has occurred in this tiny micro-blip of existence. Our species has been struggling along for about 74 millennia since the eruption of the Lake Toba supervolcano in Indonesia wiped out over 99.98% of us. Leaving a "genetic bottleneck" of primitive survivors in East Africa to cope successfully with the Nuclear Winter. This eruption changed behaviour patterns from isolated tribes of hunters to collections of farmers and agriculturists bonding together for species survival and eventual population re-growth. Then re-colonisation of Earth. Aboriginals arrived in Australia about 40 millennia ago. Europe and Asia slowly got settled along the way. Man grew into a way of life marked by the diurnal/nocturnal divide and the seasonal flow. Even had time to paint on cave walls in Auxerre about 24 millennia ago. The population gradually grew to millions - enough to cope with what caused the last mini Ice Age about 11,000 years ago. Time would become more refined. Intervals for work and feeding. The invention of sundials to break the days into hours and minutes. Splitting seconds came along in the last century with scientific breakthroughs. Atomic energy. Quantum Theory. Discovery of light speed. The refinements in the age of the Totality that is our Space Time Continuum. We've gone all the way from Planck Time to the Heat Death of the Universe. Planck Time is the smallest unit possible before running into the frontier of quantum fluctuation and "instantaneity". It's ten to the minus 43 seconds. That's how long light, traveling at 3 x 10 to the eighth power metres per second, takes to cross the smallest distance, which is 1.6 x 10 to the minus 35 metres or the quantum length.A fair old nogginboggler eh? Then we go on, outward, upward and forwards in all directions to encompass our STC which is believed to be about 13.7 billion years old/large and curved by gravity into spacetime. Our solar system clocks in at about 5 billion years. The earth is about 4.5 billion years. Proto-life came along nearly 4 billion years ago. Oldest living examples are the Australian stromatolites which are a youthful 3.85 billion years old. Talk about a window to the remote past. Parts of the STC will continue expanding inexorably for about 100 billion years or so before collapsing into entropic heat death and decay. Or disappearance into a smaller existence that can't be detected. Other parts of the STC are going to collapse, assimilated and remixed due to galactic collisions and voracious ever-growing black holes at the heart of each galaxy. Our Milky Way has such a beast at its centre. Our solar system is going to cross it on 21/12/2012 (the Winter Solstice) ending this cycle of Mayan time which has lasted 26,000 years. It's supposed to occur in such a way that Ole Sol will block any matter streams from interacting with the Earth. What will that do? There are various Apocalyptic Scenarios to discover. Or it may be like Earth as a temporarily unplugged computer which is turned on and tries to reboot. Or it may mean nothing more significant than the change from New Year's Eve 1999 to New Year's Day 2000. Treble hangovers all round and a blurry shaky re-awakening. Life and death will continue as usual. The galactic collision with our nearest neighbour Andromeda is expected in about 5 billion years or so. About the same time the Sun goes nova. It's estimated that the Milky Way black hole is about 1.5 million kilometres wide. Andromeda's invisible companion is guesstimated to mass 50 times as much as ours does. Solar systems on both sides will be shredded, subsumed and spat out to regenerate new stars. One black hole is going to be very full. And we're fucked. The End. Curtain down. So, there's a limit to time, until it all starts again. Anyway, enough wasting time. The show's about to kick off...

"Hi. How are you doing? We're Mogwai from Scotland and it's nice to be back". Adoring roars as Mogwai commence a two-hour set comprising about 12 tunes and one song (of sorts) Opening track comes off as a tantalising mix of Spaceman Three monodronic plucking and fiery vintage Velvet Underground squalls of white noise and feedback. Very soothing and just what the true fans want to hear. Might have come from the new CD. They haven't gone interstellar yet and fragments and shards of melody drift deliciously through the mix. There's one bass, three guitars and a ferocious drummer who's cranking out the bpm's at a d n' b pace. Plus keyboards and electronics ranging from simple "Tunes R Us" level to screech-honking blasts of sonic delirium. Found and treated sounds include bagpipes and wheezy panting pipe organs at times. That might be me though relapsing into a Kraftwerk moment. There also seems to be a subtle disorienteering interplay between band and mixer. Tunes rise, grabbing you by the throat and bellowing in your face. They dissipate leaving you drifting for what seems like a fortnight, before returning to shelter. There's even an endearing attempt at a song. Asking Nick how he would define the band's sound, he says "an ambient Jesus and Mary Chain". Apt in places. I can also hear echoes of Kraftwerk, the Electric Prunes raga riffs. There are vintage King Crimson freakouts, especially in the final tune. Now they sound like My Bloody Valentine, now like space whispers versus howls and gibbers from some cyber-mutant monkey house. Chilly atmospherics collide with MC5 freakouts. Early Floyd, say hello to a darker ambient Sigur Ros and cascades of shivertones and Frippertronics. Long groandrones and tinkly keyboards. Massive fun. I'm a confirmed fan, but not as much of an anorak as Nick who knows at least 3 tune titles. In a nutshell, the concert was pretty much like this review. Expect the unexpected. Buy the ticket. Take the ride. Meander hither and yon. And enjoy. I did.

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