{"id":5,"date":"2006-04-21T01:17:30","date_gmt":"2006-04-21T06:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=5"},"modified":"2010-09-19T10:34:54","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T16:34:54","slug":"65-minutes-of-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/65-minutes-of-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"65 Minutes of Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Sunday I realised another one of my ambitions and went to see Mogwai in concert.\u00c2\u00a0 They were playing as part of the Domino<\/em> festival in Brussels, at the Ancienne Belgique<\/em> (a great<\/span> venue!). Although I only cared about seeing Mogwai, I figured that while I’d forked out EUR22.00 I may as well catch some of the other bands on the bill.<\/p>\n

I got there in time to catch Wolf Eyes, whom I’d never heard, but had read some good press on. Sadly, they turned out to be just unlistenable noise<\/em> – the kind of shouty faux-deep vocals you get on death-metal, over a repetitive pounding (and in some cases stamping) on the guitar, and some sax playing from a guy who must have only picked up the instrument for the first time as he walked onstage. It was just horrible<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Just when I was beginning to think that I was turning into my dad (“There’s no tune and you can’t understand a word they’re singing…”), 65 Days of Static took to the stage, proving that noise can be good – even brilliant. Aided by judicious use of backing tracks, samples of computer blips and beeps, sequencers, and other tricks more normally associated with dance outfits, 65DOS really<\/span> kicked things up a notch. They’re mining a similar vein to Mono and Explosions In The Sky (and indeed Mogwai), but do a better job than both of those bands thanks to some of the tightest<\/em> drumming I have ever heard. If you closed your eyes (or were too short to see over the crowds nodding along furiously) you could be forgiven for thinking that it was a drum machine – that was turned up fast<\/span>. Brilliant.<\/p>\n

Next up were the mighty, mighty Mogwai. I was interested to see how they would pull it off live, when a lot of their music is actually pretty mellow. And on balance, they delivered pretty convincingly. The first half was OK – nothing outstanding – just proficient renditions of the generally slower material. Most of the audience seemed to like it (this is the first ‘rock’ concert I’ve been to where the audience shushes talkers to silence!), but for me they were too much of a come-down after the sheer excitement of 65 Days of Static. Things took off in the second half with a masterful Glasgow Mega Snake<\/em>, followed by more of their traditional quiet-then-suddenly-ear-shatteringly-loud fare. Sadly it was all over far too soon (strangely, for a band prone to ‘songs’ that frequently run to 8+ minutes), even with a quick encore.<\/p>\n

On the whole, it was a pretty good gig. Not the blown-away defining experience I was hoping for, but still good enough to confirm my opinion of Mogwai as one of the best bands of our time. My only regret was that they didn’t play My Father My King<\/em> – but at 21 minutes of slow-build to multi-layered guitar shitstorm, it would probably have been difficult to pull off live. Though I’d have happily paid the EUR22.00 just to see them perform only that one song – and there’s not many bands I’d pay a Euro a minute to see. Catch them if you can.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Sunday I realised another one of my ambitions and went to see Mogwai in concert.\u00c2\u00a0 They were playing as part of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2],"tags":[32,42],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gigs","category-music","tag-gigs-2","tag-music-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}