Mogwai - 'Mr Beast' (PIAS) Released 06/03/06

Now in their eleventh year, Mogwai are back with their fifth long-player - the ominously titled ‘Mr Beast’. Devoid of orchestrals that embellished previous albums, ‘Mr Beast’ sees the Glaswegians return to the fray with a stripped down, almost back-to-basics approach born simply to reflect their cathartic live sets. Yet, despite this, it’s arguably their most complete work to date. Containing a mix of slow-building minimal tracks, stunning melodious tunes and explosive beasts – the likes of which were the trademark of their 1996 debut ‘Young Team’ – it’s a musical tour-de-force containing everything you might love about this band.

From the muted, portentous opening piano dinks of ‘Auto Rock’, the track subtly gathers urgency until it leads us into the unwaveringly thunderous ‘Glasgow Mega-Snake’. A defining Mogwai moment, the track cuts to the chase and abandons the traditional quiet/loud formula and instead bombards us with three and a half minutes of glorious white noise. A perfectly balanced work, we’re then treated to the downbeat, sanguine ‘Acid Food’ with Stuart Braithwaite lending his archetypal hushed vocals to simple affecting instrumentals, while ‘Travel Is Dangerous’ ups the ante balancing gorgeous interludes with volatile howling guitars and an uncharacteristically roused Braithwaite. Indeed, it’s testament to the band that they can create something so sonically dense with just five men and their instruments.

Fortunately, there are no signs of ‘Mr Beast’ losing its bite as the album reaches its second half. After the respite of ‘Team Handed’, the piano driven gem that is ‘Friend of the Night’ in its understated elegance and grandeur is nothing short heart-warming, while the minimal ‘Emergency Trap’ and the shimmering ‘Folk Death 95’ also impress. But it’s ‘I Chose Horses’ that truly shines. Startlingly beautiful and melancholic, it unhurriedly shimmers along at almost funeral pace while Tetsuya Fukagawa from Japanese hardcore band Envy adds enigmatic almost ethereal spoken words. Brilliant. Unapologetically, it all ends with the crashing one-dimensional soundscape of ‘We’re No Here’ – a track which offers no light or optimism, just a powerful drone of noise.

While any individual tracks on ‘Mr Beast’ may fail to reach the dizzy peaks of the likes of ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’, ‘Hunted By A Freak’ or ‘2 Rights Make 1 Wrong’, as a collective work it’s near impeccable.