simon bond

I'm trying to find the way home

When I was younger, I had a routine that involved me running a bath every evening, and sitting, naked by the radiator, in the dark. Night after night, with a towel over my head covering me like a shroud, I would sit and listen to the water splashing and bubbling. I could sit there for hours, just listening and shivering. I could concentrate on these sounds because outside the darkness nothing existed. The usual reverberations of natural life ceased because I did not know about them, did not care. All I knew was the bubbling water. I was safe. I suppose it doesn't take much analysing to see what I was trying to achieve with this behaviour. I've often heard it said that the closest thing to returning to the womb is heroin. Sometimes I think that if I was far enough over the edge to kill myself, I would do it with heroin. Under the towels, and now, I think I would have Mogwai on the stereo.

Yeah, yeah, heroin is a serious matter, and I'm being flippant, but do you understand what I'm trying to say? Mogwai create music that moves me so much because I know that I have heard their sounds before. I am not talking about their much discussed influences; shoegazing and all that, I am talking about their hum, their whistle. Noises that make me feel safe. Mogwai mean so much to me because I have a pulse, because once upon a time this pulse was all I heard. And before that? Well, the hum. Inner space, I suppose. Have you heard Tracy? I mean, what is that noise? It is the sound of the earth turning, the sound in the Marabar caves. It is the sound gravity would make if only we were lucky enough to hear it.

When I am back at home in the town where my parents still live, I sometimes spend a lot of time walking in the woods. It is a very special place to me. A place where I did mostly everything for the first time. Walking through the woods when the still light is gliding, dying, I hear the hum. There is no wind yet the sound sails. All is still yet sound glides. Here, Young Team sounds so vulnerable, so fiercely personal. As it gets darker around me, I lose sense of what is underfoot. I sail as Mogwai soar. When they Eek, I gain still more height, till I glide in the darkness above the still trees. The moon ahead of me; it's goddess probably also hears the band. I sail till I reach the beach and suddenly I am aware that I am losing height. Before I crash to the sand, I hear the sound of the waves competing with the wind that blows me one way, and then another. The wind whistles around the base of the sand dunes, the tide crashes down, down.

God, these kids are lucky. They have managed to produce a soundtrack to their searching, and they have accompanied it with an answer, the shiver I feel when I am under the towels. It won't last. They're young and I just feel that they could be influenced by the wrong people. They must keep doing what they set out to do in the first instance. I don't necessarily mean their sound because Young Team is a far departure from their first singles. As I see it, the band have a responsibility to articulate what the vast majority cannot. Where I sit, I can see terraced houses outside, soiled by years of indifference, but Mogwai penetrate the apple blossom growing in one of the gardens. They highlight the pink flowers and show them as the focal point of this city tonight. It is wet and soon it will be dark, but Mogwai have a power to emphasise the beauties that keep us alive. In the world that we share with this band we can now see a unity which gives protection.

Months after I first heard these songs, they are still vital. They still do their job. For these moments are sent to us from somewhere very special. In the same way that some people have a faith in God, I have a faith in a world different to our own but inhabiting the same space. It is populated by serpents that dance in the sky. Huge, great things that cannot see or touch us anymore than we can reach out and touch the dying yellow light on this summer evening. Tonight the dragons are at their most content. They glide so masterfully through the air around me, and I think it is they who bring forth these sounds I adore so much. As they beat the sky their aura is felt in this world and Mogwai's amplifiers make sounds that seem mutations of the past's grace and beauty.

Some of the most beautiful moments in Mogwai's music are when something gives, the reverberation falls away, the guitars are making so much noise that they die just for a second. That these moments seem accidental shows how perfectly right Mogwai is. Whether we will see more beauty from this band is arguable. We should still celebrate them. I never thought that I would see another band totally overwhelm me like Mogwai have. I saw them live recently and they were stunning. Their album is perfect, it makes me sad, nostalgic, and when it is sunny, Young Team makes me strong. I am young again. I have something to give.

 

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