Time And A Half

(photo by pixelspin)

I thought I'd break from the Saturday norm this morning and post before the bacon roll action starts. Last night was a fairly traumatic double-leaving-do which resulted in a pretty late night culminating in getting home to find the door locked and the catch down, visions of still being there now having camped in the shelter of our wheelybin having passed by now. Someone else was in. I have the privilege of working in an office environment where everybody actual gets on, a real rarity, so the departure of four of my closest compadres in the last month or so cuts me deep, cuts me real deep. But I soldier on til my day comes, I bide my time, I wait for my moment and someday I will pounce and carpe diem, boys.

Much like Zinedine Zidane.

Without a hint of a joke, that must be the best link I, and probably anyone, has ever written. Anyway, it means I'm posting about what I'm listening to right now. For some reason I've been buying far more music than I can comfortably find time to listen to at the moment, which is why Mogwai's latest effort hasn't had sufficient aural privileges. They've composed a soundtrack to an artisan French film (which it kills me that I haven't seen yet) about the footballing superhero Zizou. The film follows ZZ around the pitch for the duration of one whole match, Real Madrid vs. Villareal, using 17 different cameras. The film is soundtracked by Mogwai in reserved, dramatic mode and if that doesn't sound like just the most amazing thing, then I don't know what does. At the time of writing, like right now, I'm listening to Half-Time, which I believe featured on the trailers. It's almost 7 minutes long and sounds like a good number of the brooding, menacing slow passages from Mr Beast. This is a Good Thing, of course, that album being one of the finest of the year. The track splits the soundtrack in two (fairly obviously), providing a fulcrum between the moodier first half, and the more dynamic second. It really is a game of two halves, Brian. There's none of the juddering, cataclysmic dynamic shifts of some of Mogwai's work here, but it's almost all the better for it - a beautiful tribute to a beautiful player.

Note on Mogwai: Mogwai are probably the best band ever. They have released a slew of apocalyptic, breathtaking records and have a (fully justified) reputation for a skull-scraping, mindblowing live show. Their music veers from hypnotic, delicate guitar riffs and piano passages to white noise that sounds like its trying to escape from inside your head with a hacksaw. Guitar riffs so monumental that the whole world sways when they're played, banks of noise that build up like a tower of Babel that keep going even when you think that to get louder is a physical and scientific impossibility. Unassuming, approaching-middle-aged Glaswegians with bald heads that produce the sound of the end of the world, presuming that the end of the world is not just catastrophic but incredibly beautiful. In short, there's no-one to touch them, none of their post-rock peers have managed to transcend a sound so completely to elevate to a singular platform, population: one. In short, the best band in the world.

The Music
Mogwai - Half-time
Mogwai - It Would Have Happened Anyway
Mogwai - Like Herod

The 'fo
Artist: Mogwai
Website: mogwai.co.uk
Recommended: Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait OST
Label: Pias
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Godspeed! You Black Emperor - Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennae to Heaven
Tags: Mogwai; Zidane; soundtrack; movie