Mogwai today announce a special hometown show at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Sunday 7 November. The news comes as the band’s tenth studio album As The Love Continues debuts at No.1 on the UK Official Albums Chart, their first number one album, and at No.9 on Billboard’s US Top Album Sales Chart, their first time inside the US Top 40.
A special limited pre-sale for those fans who held tickets for the band’s cancelled concert at the Hydro Arena begins 10am Thursday 4 March, with tickets on general sale from 10am Friday.
As The Love Continues landed at No.1 on the UK Official Albums Chart on Friday 26 February, 25 years to the week that the band set up their label Rock Action Records to release their debut single.
Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite:
It is 25 years this week we released our first single ‘Tuner/Lower’, the first release on our own label Rock Action Records. We didn’t start the band or the label to get into the charts. None of us ever envisaged either the band or the label being in a position where having a number one record would be a possibility.
We started the label with a loan of £400 from my now-brother in law. Martin’s folks generously helped us out by paying for the studio to record the songs. We were just kids that wanted to make an amazing noise and get our record played on John Peel. Amazingly John did play the record, and one thing led to another to get us to the point we’re at now. It’s been an incredible journey making music together over the last quarter century, taking us to places we never dreamed of and getting to play our music to more people than we ever imagined.
The album was recorded last year with producer Dave Fridmann and features the singles “Ritchie Sacramento” and “Dry Fantasy”, alongside nine other stunning new songs, with contributions from Atticus Ross and Colin Stetson. It is available via Rock Action Records to stream and buy in various formats, including digital, CD and double vinyl. A special edition box set includes the CD, coloured double vinyl LP, special single vinyl pressing of five album demo tracks, and a photo book.
As The Love Continues is the follow up to 2017’s Every Country’s Sun and 2014’s Rave Tapes, two records which saw the band reach the Top 10 of the UK Official Albums Chart for the first time. In between the band released a career-spanning retrospective Central Belters and collaborated with filmmaker Mark Cousins to soundtrack his documentary Atomic. Earlier this year, they released the soundtrack to the Sky Original drama ZeroZeroZero, available for its first week exclusively on a pay-what-you-can (PWYC) basis via Bandcamp, with half of proceeds going to Help Musicians and NHS charities.
As The Love Continues was originally due to be recorded in America, but the pandemic led to a relocation to Worcestershire and with producer Dave Fridmann separated by an ocean and appearing like an Orwellian oppressor. This pandemic necessity was quickly routine, it also bought them a little more time. Unable to perform the album for the time being, Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite hopes the music can take you from somewhere different to where you are, “unless you are somewhere really amazing and then why are you listening to some weird music like this?”
Mogwai have advanced without a plan since they were teenagers, there have been no secretive meetings to work out the master plan. It is rare to hear a band that has been going for this long, and have this many albums behind them – ten records in and still no disappointments or mistaken creative left turns. You may know what to expect, but you will never get the same. Both transcendent and surprising, As The Love Continues shows that Mogwai are still offering solace from the mundane, supplying the soundtrack to whatever movie you are making in your head.