Atomic - Mogwai

Track list:

1. Ether
2. SCRAM
3. Bitterness Centrifuge
4. U-235
5. Pripyat
6. Weak Force
7. Little Boy
8. Are You a Dancer?
9. Tzar
10. Fat Man

Running time: 48 minutes
Released: 2016

Is this my first 2016 release? I think so. It's not the first album I've picked up this year but its the first that appears here due to alphabet. This is also my first listen to this as I have yet to own it a week. One song popped up in a shuffle but I've not yet paid the purchase any heed.

First listens rarely offer best value, but I'll head into this one, as I don't yet feel like making dinner. Ether starts rather remotely, not what I would expect from Mogwai, a drone and tinny electronics over it. I guess style has to mix up for soundtracks though, and it is plenty accessible. There are echoes of Vangelis in this first piece as the softly melodic theme arrives, the backing evokes the same sculpted spaces the Greek manufactured for scores such as 1492 or Antarctica. As the piece builds there is a little more evidence of the guitar-based instrumentals that Mogwai are known for, but it never departs from the original course enough to indulge those elements.

The film this soundtracks was apparently an Auntie documentary on the atomic age. Passed me by entirely, but explains the title. I think it is safe to say by the midpoint of SCRAM that this is not a work that I would recognise as Mogwai if I didn't know it was them. It fits into a black hole of a genre of thematic instrumental music... pretty clearly soundtrack material without being easily definable as anything else. I find it loopy, with little hooks to fall into. Patterns take over and run my mind as I fall, trance-like, under its spell. To call the themes dark would be to sell short the night. It isn't insufferably dark though, just predominantly. I have to say I think Bitterness Centrifuge would make a great band name; its a pretty awesome track title and I find it conjuring pictures of emotional chemistry labs. Dystopian future, anyone? This track is slower, more menacing in pace, fuzzy, unclear. Deliberately so, and with a number of different strands competing for attention as lighter top end lines arrive to brighten the overall mood of the tune. I could see this growing on me quite a lot.

U-235 may relate to something of the here and now, but the edgy staccato of the tune definitely has me thinking megacorps and rain, persecution and cyberware. This is dark future RPG music and could just as easily be soundtracking an after-dark incursion into a guarded warehouse looking for some secret and dangerous new technology. Very apt. Pripyat is the number that I have heard once before and it starts now, foreboding in tone, slightly Gothic feel to it. This goes from cyberpunk to sci-fi, and then back. The overwhelming feel of oppression ebbs and flows through this track based on what the primary electric "tune" is doing. A murderous hum around just about every sound on this record would drive you to distraction were it not so clear that it is intentional. A nice light evening does not really suit this, but there we are.

Weak Force has more in common with Mogwai's non-soundtrack work immediately. A much clearer sound and electronics following a pattern which suits them. It is lacking in bold guitars though so it probably wouldn't stand out as a Mogwai track in a shuffle. The piece is possibly the "nicest" so far, but it is also the dullest. The dirty air, drones and other artefacts that cloud the previous tunes are noticeable by their absence, and that absence is to the detriment of the track. It leaves fewer rabbit holes for the ear to draw you down, creates fewer images in my head as I listen. I find myself bouncing off the cleaner sound quite hard, it is out of place, not suited. The opening to Little Boy is much more promising. This has a nice clean melody, but a droning sound is back to frame it, and there is another guitar line layered in there. This is richer, lusher, easier to connect to. The melody is one of loneliness, something I have felt today... its been an odd one. The changeable weather - first bright, then wet, and with the wet a darkness that belies the time of day - has directly impacted my mood, as has my inability to get anything done since 11ish. The morning was great; the afternoon not so much, yet I have had "leisure time" and talked to friends during that time. I find myself too complex and it blights certain aspects of my life. Ho hum.

A more subdued track next, more loneliness, a contrast begging me to close my eyes and risk falling asleep at an inopportune time of day. I don't feel like the album jumped here suddenly, and yet neither did I really have any expectation of, nor notice, it turning to these understated slow and emptier tunes. I rather like the effect, but I suspect that whilst the growling, droning tracks might grow on me, these removed numbers will likely never be better than they are on first exposure - less intricacies to learn perhaps? 

Do you ever think you are drinking too much? I have that feeling all the time, and yet this week as many days have passed with me taking none than taking any, and if any just a single beer. I constantly worry I might be prone to alcoholism and yet only ever indulge in moderation. Just throwing that out there, as Tzar winds down and we approach the finale, Fat Man. Lost and lonely piano melody wandering. It is left I think a little too long without significant company. When it gets companion sounds to wrap itself in and co-exist with the piece comes alive in a very... human kind of way. Alas I find that most of it is just a bit too slow, a bit too sparse, to hold my interest.

I think a second, and third, listen are in order to get the best out of this album - the same holds true for most, lets be honest. First time through, give me the dirty, fuzzy, busy sounds over the cleaner and clearer ones, though.