Mogwai - Mogwai Young Team (Remastered 2022) Mogwai

The opening narration of Mogwai Young Team, the band’s debut from 1997, sounds out across the years, with mid-tone rumble of the bass coming in like a fog signal for those lost at sea. Like everything the band had released up until that point and like the group’s PR persona, the album is both supremely confident, even provocatively brimming with bragadiccio while poking fun at themselves. It’s something they’ve done for the 25 years since, except their stature and artistry has only grown to fulfil all the wry, self-aware posturing of the late 90s. MYT solidified a couple of years of playing basements, then clubs and stages around the world, wrecking havoc with cathedral-sized guitar architecture. This was the first incarnation of the group, with Teenage Fanclub’s Brendan O’Hare behind the traps, a band perhaps in transition but still confident in their craft. Like Herod, R U Still in 2 It (with Aidan Moffat guesting), Mogwai Fear Satan, Radar Maker- it’s already like a greatest hits set. There are so many classics on their debut that are still fan favourites; pulverising noise, beautiful passages of melodic, crisscrossing guitar that still soundtrack stars forming and exploding.