Storm Static Sleep: A Pathway Through Post Rock

by Jack Chuter

The fact is that Mogwai were, and still are, epic. Three bands they namedropped back in the day were My Bloody Valentine, Slint and The God Machine, and the band’s early work landed somewhere between the three. Their sound had a real affinity with the loud / quiet model put forward by Slint (in fact, the working title of “Like Herod” was simply “Slint”), but looked to stretch it further and make the dynamic contrast more severe. What better way than to intensify the climaxes through the white noise guitars of MBV, which burst forward so violently that they bent out of tune? And then there was the influence of The God Machine, whose desperate, melodic melodrama – heavy and tense, like Children of God-era Swans – gifted Mogwai their gentle cinematic hue. Another analogy would be Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation dragged out on a lonely hike through the countryside, trudging triumphantly to the tops of hills, all strobe-lit distortion and feral punk energy, before tumbling gently down the other side, slackened and spent.