If anyone is interested in taking a peek, I've finally put up the video from the Mogwai gig last Saturday night. It captures 9 minutes of their final track of the night, "Mogwai Fear Satan". Unfortunately the sound isn't great as we were stationed right beside a big stack of speakers, it's ok in the 'quieter' moments. You'll definetly appreciate this if you were there, or if you are familiar with the track Mogwai Fear Satan.

For some reason you can't skip in the video, so just let it play to 5:31, when all hell breaks lose and Stuart Braithwaite makes a fairly impressive lunge with his guitar. I wasn't going to forget this moment either way, but the video helps to re-live it. Video is here (98MB mpeg, 9 mins long, right click, 'Save As')

Also, some reviews of the Dublin gig I've found:

Mogwai Fan Site:

"pretty solid performance hampered by occasional technical difficulties (most
noticeably the vocoder sputtering on and off). worst hunted by a freak
i have ever heard live redeemed by the best mogwai fear satan i have
ever heard live (helped in no small part by the crowd actually shutting during
the quiet part for the first time in my memory of mogwai gigs). the new songs
went down fairly well, especially auto rock and the vicious rendition
of glasgow mega-snake."

Nick Kelly in The Times, 10th January:

"Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how good a band Mogwai are.
Tastemakers might grumble that the Glaswegians’ free-form, quiet-loud dynamic
belongs to the last century, but live their music sounds timeless and
transcendent.

What is beautiful about Mogwai is the mix of magic and mayhem
within a single song, that sense of opposing and contradictory forces belonging
together, each throwing the other into sharp relief. But it’s not as though they
are a one-trick pony: their fifth studio album Mr. Beast (due out in
March) is a thrillingly ambitious record that adds to the mix everything from
Neo-Classical piano to computerised electronica — from Mozart to the Mac.

In this context, perhaps it’s not that surprising that the band
were asked to play a week of shows at the ICA in London this week, where they
will be supported by a different band of their choice each night. There are also
gigs scheduled in Moscow and Tokyo, but this show in Temple Bar Music Centre was
their first of 2006.

Opening with their forthcoming single Friend of the
Night, the band were mostly a six-piece for this set, with Stuart
Braithwaite and Dominic Aitchison’s telepathic guitar duel shadowed by two
keyboards, bass and drums. On Auto Rock, which pounded and pummelled
its way to a knockout finish, the sextet were joined by a seventh member to help
hammer away at the cymbals, like a school kid let loose in the music room.

Inevitably, the computer broke down, leading to some frantic
activity on stage and on-the-hoof adjustments to the set list. Not that the
audience was complaining: there was plenty of older material served up, with
crowd-pleasers such as Stanley Kubrick and, from their debut album, Tracy and Summer dusted down with feeling.

After ending the set with We’re No Here (sic) the band
returned for Folk Death 95 from the new album and an astonishing
version of the epic Mogwai Fear Satan.

On this form, Mogwai should fear no one. "

I'd love to see them again soon, they have just announced a number of dates in France once they return from Russian/Japan/US in April. All we need is a date in Barcelona and I'm on a plane (One of my ambitions for the year is to get to a Barca game as they're in some form right now).

Published by Paul.