Announce April 2020 tour of the Hebrides & highlands (tickets on sale this Friday)
2021 UK tour dates also on sale now
Mogwai today announce three special and incredibly intimate shows in the Hebrides and in the highlands of Scotland.
The shows will be taking place in three venues not often served by major touring bands: the beautiful and historical Pavillion situated in the highland town of Strathpeffer; the community cultural Aros Centre on the Isle of Skye; and the century-old Stornoway Town Hall on the Isle of Lewis. It will be the band’s first time playing each location and they’re thrilled to be able to perform at such special and unique venues.
Of the tour, Stuart Braithwaite from the band says, “Playing concerts in the Hebrides and in the highlands is something that we’ve always wanted to do but never had the opportunity to do. It’s going to be brilliant being able to play our music to people who perhaps don’t get the chance to go to concerts in the larger cities that often. It’s also going to be really special to spend time in some of the most amazing natural surroundings anywhere in the world.”
Local in-person pre-sale tickets will be available to purchase from the Pavilion Box Office and Dingwall Leisure Centre for The Pavillion, the Aros Centre Box Office for the Aros Centre, and the Delights Cafe for Stornoway.
General tickets go on sale at 9am Friday 13th March 2020. For more information and tickets please visit: http://www.mogwai.scot/shows
Last month Mogwai announced a run of three UK shows for February 2021, that will see the band return to London’s Roundhouse and the scene of their biggest headline show to date, the SSE Hydro in their hometown of Glasgow, as well as Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse. The shows will take place 25 years on from the release of the band’s debut single ‘Tuner’/’Lower’. For more information and tickets please visit: www.mogwai.scot/shows.
Mogwai – UK shows 2020-21 (new shows in bold)
Wednesday 22 April 2020 The Pavillion, Strathpeffer
Thursday 23 April 2020 Aros Centre, Isle of Skye
Friday 24 April 2020 Stornoway Town Hall, Isle of Lewis
Wednesday 17 February 2021 Roundhouse, London
Friday 19 February 2021 O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester
Saturday 20 February 2021 SSE Hydro, Glasgow
Mogwai return to the studio shortly with producer Dave Fridmann to begin work on their tenth studio album, the follow up to 2017’s Every Country’s Sun, their second top 10 album in a row after 2014’s Rave Tapes. In between the band released a career-spanning retrospective Central Belters and collaborated with filmmaker Mark Cousins to soundtrack his documentary Atomic. The band’s latest soundtrack is for the Sky Original drama ZeroZeroZero, which is available to watch in the UK from May. ZeroZeroZero is created by Stefano Sollima (Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Gomorrah), with Leonardo Fasolia and Mauricio Katz, and was shot on three continents and in six languages. It stars Andrea Riseborough (Birdman, The Death of Stalin), Dane DeHaan (The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets) and the Golden Globe-winning and multiple Emmy and Tony nominated Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, Stigmata).
Mogwai Biography (2020)
Nine studio albums, a live album and four compilations, four soundtracks, a record label, and a few blown PAs and dislodged pieces of ceiling over uncountable gigs. Over the 24 years since they formed with rehearsal after rehearsal rattling Stuart Braithwaite’s living room, Mogwai might have become one of the most important groups of a fragmented but increasingly potent British musical underground, but they’ve steadfastly refused to sit back and rest on their laurels.
Indeed, you might refer to them as the cockroaches of post rock, for Mogwai have never split up for a while in favour of a lucrative reunion playing classic albums live, instead continuing to push themselves and their sound. Then again, as any cursory listen to their 2015 compilation Central Belters will tell you, is post rock really a generous enough term to describe what Mogwai do? Over 24 years their one constant has been of a mastery of dynamics, an embracing both of power and minimalism, and a willingness to experiment with new instrumentations and technology. Within that though, one of the most recognisable sonic identities in contemporary music unites the songs as disparate of graceful sung moments like Travel Is Dangerous or epic Black Sabbath temper tantrum My Father My King, the shimmering, stately atmosphere of I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead or the burbling kosmische electronics that drive Mexican Grand Prix.
The Mogwai of 2020 is a very different group to the four kids who, in February 1996, released their debut single Tuner/Lower to a musical climate suffering the appalling hangover of late Britpop. Theirs was a sound of happy accident, uniting over shared love of skateboarding, Star Wars, The Cure, and American indie rock to somehow end up with music that was, and remains, as affecting as it is powerfully loud, as sensitive as much as it has the propensity to rip your ears off. Since debut album Young Team the group have always kept their eyes on the future, playing different sets mostly of new material on each night of their never-ending tours. “It’s better to keep doing what you’re doing right now,” says Braithwaite. “looking at what’s happened with some other bands it’s hard to get people interested in what you’re doing now once you’ve made a big deal about going back to something from ten or 20 years ago.”
Part of Mogwai’s progressive zeal is in their continuing independence and support for artists around them. In 2005 they opened their own Castle Of Doom studio, using it to record four albums as well as opening it up to fellow- travellers Errors, Malcolm Middleton, and The Twilight Sad. Their Rock Action label has not only released Mogwai’s own music since that debut single, but albums from Blanck Mass, Sacred Paws, Afrirampo and Remember Remember, among others.
In a commercial climate that hardly favours independent artists operating outside the mainstream, Mogwai have always led by example, doing it themselves, where they can. “Someone sent us a flyer of a gig we did with Trout at Nice ’n’ Sleazy in 1996, and I remembered going ‘round the photocopy shops, making them,” Stuart Braithwaite has said. “Even though everything’s on a different scale, you’re still doing the same thing. It’s still letting people know that you’re playing and making sure that all the band members remember there’s a gig that day… there’s nothing different about playing to 2000 people as to playing to 50 people. Just you’re a bit higher up. And you get a dressing room! But really, it’s the same thing.”
In 2021, Mogwai will be returning to the scene of their biggest headline show to date, the SSE Hydro in their hometown of Glasgow. They will also be returning to the studio shortly to begin work on their tenth studio album with producer Dave Fridmann, the follow up to 2017’s Every Country’s Sun, their second Top 10 album in a row after 2014’s Rave Tapes.
