Mogwai Listening Club

Ten Rapid is one I’ve not listened to that much. It was included in the huge Mogwai torrent I got back in 2007 and I’ve added each release since (including some promos for review).

Ill add more to this later but I am excited to really dog into it this week.

I think I’ve only listened to Ten Rapid about 3 times for some reason. It just never was something I’ve wanted to put on. Listening to it this morning, I’m amazed how good it is. It’s the perfect blueprint for everything the band would become. Ithaca and Helicon 1&2 are amazing for a bands first few songs.

@Icarus-Smicarus thanks for posting Lower, I’d never heard it before. I really like it .

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Can’t remember listening to Ten Rapid all the way before. Ithica and Helicon 1 kind of tower over the rest of it… there’s just a bit more composure and control going on with them.

Had never seen the video to Helicon 1 before. Think it might be my favourite music vid ever now.

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I’d just started trying to go through their discography for the first time, so this listening club has come at a great time for me. I don’t think I paid too much attention when I listened to Ten Rapid initially, guessing I just dismissed it as an ‘odds and ends’ release. It flows really well for a compilation and Ithica is an amazing track.

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really like A Place For Parks, always feels like Helicon 2’s happier younger brother

killin’ millions of people

killin’ millions of people

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think the video was made for the Central Belters release

Listened to Ten Rapid earlier today. I knew Summer already (think somebody had put that on a mixtape for me at some point) and others felt familiar, but I think this was the first time I’d properly listened to it. As others have said, for an odds and sods compilation, it feels like it flows really nicely. Some of it feels quite charmingly amateur, if that’s the right word, especially with the glockenspiels on some tracks. Helicon 1 is probably my favourite, but tough to pick!

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Love how much Ithaca sounds like early Modest Mouse.

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Big this^. Not one I go back to very often, but it still sounds great and you can hear seeds of so much of what was to follow. Listening to the new album it’s weird how they’re still basically the same band doing the same thing. What’s good about Ten Rapid is what’s good about ATLC.

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Their greatest strength, the consistent recognisable and damn cool sound, is also their greatest weakness, their sameness and perhaps lack of much progression. Two sides of the same coin i reckon.

They’re far more stylistically varied than the vast majority of post-rock bands imo

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Hum,I think post rock gets a bit of an unfair bashing on here but that claim is a bit “world’s tallest dwarf”

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Post-rock is great. EITS and their Mogwai-aping ilk don’t qualify in my book.

Some days Ten Rapid is my fav

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I’d put all of these under post-rock…

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  • Ten Rapid
  • Westing (by Musket and Sestant)

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Explosions In The Sky dont sound like Mogwait though and if anything a lot of bands immitate EITS.
EITS are postrock and they are good imo.

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I hadn’t listened to this in many years, but would have listened to it lots when I first got it…can’t remember whether this was before or after Young Team. I always thought of it like a full album – which is maybe explained by @Icarus-Smicarus comments about some tracks being re-recorded.

Always liked it, and very happy on re-visiting it that it sounded better than I remembered. I’m going to go with the approach of @nicholasurfe and do a top 5 songs, which are:

  1. Helicon Pt 1 – I think this has been my favourite piece of music for portions of my life. Even in this original version that guitar sound still sounds massive, beautiful and every note sounds completely necessary. Pretty much perfect.
  2. Helicon Pt 2 (so far, so Helicon) – Back when I first heard these I would mostly get excited about the noisiest tracks but I’ve come to appreciate these mellower moments over time. This one sounds so laid back and gorgeous, albeit in a melancholy way. Love those harmonics also.
  3. Ithica 27 9 – This is one of the tracks that probably changed my mind about the possibilities for making heavy sounding guitar music, having grown up with more metal/rock/punk stuff. It’s still blistering when it kicks off.
  4. Tuner – A simple but lovely little song, which pops into my head quite often for some reason. Not fully sure what the lyrics are about, but can empathise with lines about talking to random cats, and the melody resolves nicely towards the end alongside the line ‘Let me go’ she said…and I’ll find it.
  5. Summer – Kicks of the album sounding raw, powerful and generally great. Seems to start with a short reprise of itself, which is kind of unusual. Can’t decide whether or not I prefer it to the YT version, but not unhappy that they both exist.

Angels Versus Aliens and A Place for Parks could well be in the top 5 on a different day.

Think I appreciate the mellow moments on Ten Rapid because on later releases there’s not much material that feels so stripped back, so it’s sometimes nice to get that different side.

This clip (https://twitter.com/OtherMusicDoc/status/1334930307233894400) is great. Mogwai as young laddies in 1997, sitting on the floor of record store in New York playing A Place for Parks.

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As a huge Mogwai fan, I’ll never understand the bashing EITS get on DiS. They’re fucking great. Perhaps not as consistent, but I’ll take them over monumental bores like MONO any day.

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some great stuff.
Caspian are an EITS tribute act a bit.