2006

2005

2004

2003

30/12/02 Hyde Park World Music Festival, Sydney
13/12/02 Great Northern, Byron Bay
12/12/02 The Zoo, Brisbane
07/12/02 Homebake Festival, Sydney
09/11/02 The Empress, Melbourne
08/11/02 Revolver, Melbourne
01/11/02 Gaelic Club, Sydney
23/10/02 Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney
17/10/02 Prince Of Wales, Melbourne
30/09/02 Roma Room (Metro), Sydney
11/09/02 Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney
27/07/02 Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney
05/07/02 The Basement, Sydney
20/06/02 Roma Room (Metro), Sydney
02/06/02 Kelt's Bar, Blaxland
01/06/02 Roma Room (Metro), Sydney
17/05/02 Prince Of Wales, Melbourne
16/05/02 Prince Of Wales, Melbourne
20/04/02 The Metro, Sydney
19/04/02 The Metro, Sydney
13/04/02 Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney
11/01/02 Roma Room (Metro), Sydney

2001

17/10/02
Prince of Wales, Melbourne

A Month of Mogwai

The Metro, Prince of Wales, Livid Festival, Sydney Harbour Boat Cruise
When the general calls the muster, and we hear the trumpets brassing, we gather at the fray. For all the frayed edges are shorn, our woolly winter coats thrown out across the table. Tattered lives woven into one thousand balls of cat teasing joy. Eyes at work are a red matrix of blood boiled berserk. Heightened. The noise is intense. A suffocating embrace. A piercing needle razor deep into the pit of screaming torture. I held my breath and white razor teeth sank with a lashing command into the crowd. Thick! Merlot blood dripping drenched. This was not sweat that stuck our clothes to skin in clammy lust, but Chianti, pooling upon the floor from weeping ears, jaws agape and drooling. Cannibals. Sonic bulls, somnambulists. Homesick blues. Awake for days on beer and cigarettes. Quivering through a procession of turntable of rollicking rock dancing times. Walked into the wind, gusting in off the bite. Tight jaw claw. Teeth craving flesh. "I am wherever you want me to be!" The ideal is for every instruments sound to blend in the air like paint, tones ricocheting around the room, dazzling listeners with a concordance of colour so full it feels like it might just hold there forever. These are broken fragments. Of the support acts: In Sydney, Further scorched the opening slot, the local lads, and the crowd where there in full support, so rare for an opening support slot, the audience knew they were getting their money's worth tonight. Three bands firing on all cylinders. Trail of Dead played their first set in Australia, and as willy wonka went crazy through the tunnels, Trail of Dead belted with an edge of good times painted passionate. Where other similar sounds might hide behind smoked out silhouettes, Trail lunged around in a mad hatters hysteria. Whilst in Melbourne, Decoder Ring captured the Australian way of the new instrumental future. They stole the show when they supported Arab Strap a week later at the Hopetoun, every square inch of air vibrating to a luscious movement of rhythmic bodies caressing the visual dynamics captured on 16mm. Sounds reaching for the g-spot. And fellow Glaswegians Arab Strap supported the boys for the final show, the Sydney Harbour boat cruise. Playing an all together heartier set than the one that followed two nights later, the boat was brimming with smiling alcohol drenched eyes. The manic whirl of the previous two weeks weighing on water, kicking back relaxing, floating into the dark bays of national park in the harbour to give our nocturnal creatures a taste of fearing satan. If Mogwai were the starsS¼.. if Mogwai were air, I still hear it now long after. In the bathroom the air conditioning in reverberating the sound of helicon daze. For every gig you have ever been to. Mogwai destroy every memory of those voices surrounding you. People not listening to what they have paid to hear. Mogwai leave you with no choice. And I laugh as people stick fingers in their ears, as I gobble every decibel rearing into the bliss. All are slayn and speared. And that is what they have come to fell. The set list of Mogwai hasn't changed a great deal in the last two years. (Correct me if I am mistaken) Always finishing with My Father My King, Mogwai appear to ride the same wave most nights. The atmosphere of the venue, and the intimacy of the crowd have their effects, but Mogwai constantly finish with the same resultant "Holy FUCK!" sigh from an audience that have just witnessed a moment their ears and their imagination will not forget. Yet one moment, a shift into a new universe, the vocoder fucked up during their set at Melbourne Livid, and we were treated to a complete annihilation of 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong, a journey into unchartered territories that had me gleely sailing through the tennis centre stadium filled completely with the sound of adventure. .adventure. Spoilt with the fortune of generosity, with many thanks to Haysey and PK, we drove the thousand clicks down the Hume Highway for a musical feast. Starting on a Wednesday night out at Revolver, the crowd were dancing among the well worn couches and dim lit lamps in this huge inner melbun rock'n'roll haunt. Melbun put on a fine display of dancing rock'n'roll joints busting at the seams. Post Mogwai we found ourselves trekking down dingy dark back alleys to find the basement Cherry Bar to witness a night of music even the locals were saying was the best they had ever grooved along to. Trail of Dead played a separate show the following night to a much smaller crowd, and that night went one step closer to finishing their set in the third song, a moment they fulfilled the following day at Livid. So stylish a city is melbun on the surface, it seems everyone in this city is a graphic designer, but beneath its style, you find cracks destitute and down in its dollar, and the weekend boils with abandon and waste. The music of the city is raw and edgy, dirty, and at moments, tardy. Compare this to Sydney whose artists generate an air of polished professionalism that has promise and potential singing through the chorus. .adventure. A bit bombass, a touch to rash, its change, the death card rattles in centre. Makes me want to fuck her, smother her, suduce the seductress. But she has me chained up on this rack, soaked and seeping, tired and weeping, snapping on a shoestring to be right there again. You are a star singing stone roses whilst oasis play down the raised cigarette lighters, amongst the sea of soaring swaying arms. Savour tastes heady in an ashtray mouth of excess. The lager swamps whilst the smoke fogs. "you just don't know me yet" she whispered into his ear before her creatures took the stage. I cannae find the words. Forgive. Cohesion lacking, think. Think I'll eat some clag. Cos everything is falling apart, gotta eat some clag, cos its all lacking connection, must eat some clag. The ingredients are pretty simple for sticking together, but still can't get them right, you're baking bread when its just water and flour, some more of this is what we desire. Solidify. But its going all chunky. Gonna eat some, gonna get me some... Clag.

http://www.diskant.net/zine/columns/misc/danny.htm