Customer Reviews

Kicking a Dead Pig

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As I was about to write this review, I was wondering, who is going to care about Mogwai anyway? They are never going to make it to mainstream. However, this is indeed a murderously underrated album, I feel obliged to write a review. Also due to the fact that the brain behind MBV, Kevin Shield remixed 'Mogwai Fear Satan', dark, ominous, but beautiful. Arguably the best thing he has done since 'Loveless' and easily the best track on the album. In prior to that, Mogwai was often compared to MBV, after listening to this remix, I realized that in order to surpass 'Loveless', you have to inject much of the modern sound into it, clearly, the collaboration between Kevin Shields with David Holmes, Death In Vegas amongst many others indicates that he is walking towards that direction. For the rest of the album, it is a peregenation that is dangerous and creepy, probably one of the darkest album of 1998. Just immerse your soul into the music, move with the mood of the music, let all the creepy, uneasy feeling possess you, many times you want to give up and just put any other record on, any record will do,even Britney really! However, if you presevere, the fruit is sweet. After about 50times of repeated listening, I finally realized that how good these artists are in creating different moods, yet, they are so coherent that it sounds like this is a proper album instead of a remix album. Compare to 'CODY', this is even harder to get into, and it does not have Mercury Rev's producer whose production did not really match Mogwai's style, and in some way, spoilt the otherwise fantastic album. 'KADP' requires much of your patience, your time, your dedication, to get into the soundscape of this album. Once you are in, most probably you will not want to get out of it forever. It is not hard to tell that this is simply the BEST Mogwai album so far.

This review is for the second disc only, the Fear Satan remixes. Given that Mogwai bears no trace of humor in any of their original music, it is not surprising that this an extremely artsy bunch of remixes. All the tracks could be described as experimental. I don't know if I'd call any of this "groundbreaking!" or "highly conceptual!" but it's got some pretty interesting music. Most of these aren't really songs at all; they are more accurately described as "sound sculptures", little journeys through texture and mood. It's very rewarding for lovers of ambient music, calling to mind songs by Fripp & Eno and Seefeel. However, in spite of all pretension, there's enough rocking on here to keep it from being awful.

Mogwai remix:

The most striking thing about this remix is its reductiveness. It relies heavily on long sustains of notes and chords and looping samples from the original material. It is slower than the original, with lots of space between notes. The result is extremely ambient. Even when distorted guitar appears at the end of the song, it seems mellow within the context of the remix.

u-ziq remix:

This is the most aggresssive of the remixes. Like many other u-ziq tracks, it has jarring changes in tempo that keep it from being danceable. That's okay though, I only dance to Mogwai when I'm at a Mogwai show and am not afraid to look stupid. The really hyper tempo of the songs main section contrasts well with the two mixes that surround it, but overall it is my least favorite.

Surgeon remix:

Did I say the Mogwai remix used a lot of sustain? Um, the ENTIRE surgeon remix is pretty much just sustaining notes fading in and out, with very subtle effects gradually appearing and disappearing. It is very reminescent of an Autechre track named "Vietrmx21", which is almost entirely made up of just one chord progression repeating infinitely up and down a scale with a lot of reverb and sustain fading in and out. However, this is even simpler than that. A fun track for electronic fans, with a systematic approach to deconstructing a song using effects only.

Kevin Shields remix:

My Bloody Valentine fans, be warned: this does not sound like My Bloody Valentine. This one is the most epic of the remixes, spanning 16 minutes, almost twice as long as the original. I used to hate this remix because I thought there were so many cool parts at the beginning and end, but the middle had an almost unlistenable amount distortion on it; so much distortion that you can hardly hear any of the notes that are being played, it's all just the sound of speaker pop in and out. I can listen to it now, but the distortion still bothers me. However, one highlight is that Kevin Shields is really good at making throbbing percussion and bass lines by looping rock n roll breakbeats. Even though the loop of the percussion repeats ad nauseum without really changing at all, the break that Kevin picked is so good that it doesn't get boring. His remix for Yo La Tengo's "Autumn Sweater" shared the same quality. Also, this remix has a bunch of worthy atmospheric moments and sound textures. Overall, definitely worth listening to.

Gwai on, Wayne. Gwai on, Garth.

A variety of other artists and DJs have sampled and re-sequenced Mogwai's songs for this album, now available from emusic.com. Some renditions I consider improvements while others are a bit too repetitive and lacking coherency or evolution for me. Keep in mind that I like experimental dissolution music like sonic youth and spiritualized. I listen to this album weekly.

What are you waiting for? Go to emusic.com!

Well this is not a complete disaster, but taking any amazing bands material and playing with them will rarely even do justice to the originals, let alone emulate them..It is nice to see some of their older lo-fi material get a nice cover of sparkling sheen on top with the reinturpeted tracks..Unfortunately it is always the original brilliance of the writing, not the re-worked beat placements, that fans will appreciate..

There is quite a bit of dead weight on the first cd, but the high points are very good. Klute's version of Summer is basically a breakbeat track, but one that is a credit to the genre. Kid Loco's remix of Tracy rocks like a live hiphop instrumental, but it's basically the orignal looped without words and with a pretty funky drum track laid over it. Max Tundra's take on Helicon 2 is worlds apart from the mellowed out original, starting off kind of a little too loud and scary before it goes sailing off into dreamland. The Hood remix of Like Herod is also damn cool. Most other mixes here are pretty good, but at least two get on my nerves so much that I've probably listened to them all the way through only twice since i bought this (about 1 and a half years ago). One thing missing here are vocals, which are already so rare in Mogwai's oeuvre. (I think we to hear the word "change" a few times, but that's it.) The second disc is so slow and pretty that I feel like a zombie in paradise, as if I were suspended in a numbed awe for the 60-or-so minutes of Mogwai Fears Satan, which means that I don't really like it that much, though i definitely "appreciate" it. All the mixes here are very ambitious, but none veer away from the slow-and-subtle structure of the original. It makes for good background music while stoned and watching silent movies (other movies work too) on mute.

that this is great driving music especially at the end of the world... or great for any other passtime that sets you adrift.

A bit of a letdown. Let me explain. The standout closing song from their full-length debut CD, "Young Team," was "Fear Satan." Yet the five remixes (Mogwai re-mixes it too at the end of the first Pig disc) do not capture the soaring majesty of the original. It rose and fell, crested and ebbed in ways that reminded me of classical crescendos. The remakes here, by comparison, all burble about, but are but faint echoes of their source. The other songs, mainly from YT, that are re-mixed on the first disc fail to grab me; they are all electronic rather than guitar, drums, bass & electronics, so that difference, that subtraction in instrumentation, accounts for the minimal approaches favored by the mixers.

As a long-time My Bloody Valentine fan, the MBV mix, at 16 minutes by far the lengthiest selection on either disc, does remind me of that band's glory days in its hints of tuneful distortion trickled through massive barriers of nearly monolithic sound. It is not bad, but this and the Mogwai mix on disc one being the two passable songs out of thirteen contenders, the ratio's too low to count for much.

When this came out in 1998, I recall liking it more than I do now. Perhaps other groups and other producers have gone beyond what eight years ago sounded fresher than it does today. Mogwai, furthermore, seems to have fallen in most of the 00's into a holding pattern themselves, as their recent "Mr. Beast" rests on past triumphs more than daring adventures.

These remixes do a damn good job of the material there is given. From noise workouts ( a la Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine ) to funky workouts ( DJ Q's remix of R U Still Into It ). This remix album has something for everybody. Although depending on how you view remix albums, you'll still be missing out on one of the most addictive albums there are - remix album or not!

Remixing Mogwai: this album, like many other bands have done lately, turned out to be not that bad, but not that good either.

The MyBloodyValentine mix of "Fear of Satan" (on the second CD) is grand, but other tracks have 'boring' written all over.

I'll try another of their albums to get a better picture of this band.

Remix albums always sound like a grand concept, having a bunch of disparate artists remix an artist's work and then smacking together the results on one disc. Sometimes the contrasts work well, and sometimes they can pull it off. Mogwai's remix album leaves me thinking "sort of." There are some nice interpretations here, such as the ones from Third Eye Foundation, Alec Empire and especially My Bloody Valentine, but a lot of the album is uninteresting and could be considered filler. None of them really capture the miserable quality of Mogwai's original music, which is why the Mogwai remix of "Fear Satan" is a standout.