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from ben pablo:

my first mogwai show in five years. i didn't get to see them when they toured for mr beast because the only show they played in l.a. was coachella 2006 and i ain't ever going to one of those.

but i digress.

i don't have much to say about the openers fuck buttons except that i didn't care for them. mogwai on the other hand were amazing. i'm not sure if it's because i hadn't seen a show in five years or what but they were extremely loud. louder than the last time i saw them.

the first half of the set alternated between new songs from the hawk is howling and older songs. to be honest, i was getting a tad bit bored because they seemingly put the slower and more mellow songs at the beginning of the set. it wasn't until they played ithica 27-9 that the mood picked up. helicon 1 still brought tears to my eyes after all these years. and then came the one-two aural assault of like herod segueing into batcat. they concluded with 2 rights followed by probably one of the heaviest version of we're no here.

there were a few older songs that i would have added but i realized now that mogwai have 6 full lengths to choose songs from and it's understandable that they can't do summer, xmas steps, and kids will be skeletons at every show.

from prefixmag.com:

this band, quite simply, rocks. they’re loud. they’re full of riffs and feedback. they’ve got heartbreaking melodies that stomp their way out of the squall. and they’re back with a vengeance. mogwai is touring in support of their forthcoming 6th full length, the hawk is howling, and their bone crushing sound thundered into the wiltern and nearly shook down all the ornamental woodwork in this gorgeous theater on an otherwise unassuming tuesday night.

for just under two hours, the glaswegians pummeled our eardrums and seared our eyeballs with strobe lights so bright i needed to shade my eyes to even hear the music. but that’s the brilliance of a mogwai show. their records are loud and raucous and also soft and contemplative, often within a few bars of each other. live they are an experience. recordings can’t contain their sound—live they can push the boundaries of their instruments and amps at the mercy of our ears. and it’s a beautiful thing.

the set is heavy on the new songs and that’s not a bad thing. if these live versions are anything to go by, this new record is going to be yet another classic mogwai loud/soft riff-heavy affair—“i’m jim morrison, i’m dead” and “scotland’s shame” right up there with “helicon 1” and “like herod” for heartbreaking, earsplitting beauty. and those latter tracks still break my heart in that wonderful way only music can—these two songs alone worth the price of admission. “like herod” is a study in tension building; most of the crowd knows the explosion is coming, but we’re still holding our breath and the air stops vibrating, like the calm before the storm and when the band finally tears into the wall of noise, heads are bobbing and devil horns are pumping. and a seamless segue into new track “batcat” shows that the band has both come a long way from the young team days but also full circle.

the one two punch of “2 rights make 1 wrong” and “we’re no here” closes a near perfect night, with the jaunty bass line of “2 rights” giving way to its own wall of swirling noise that sets the stage for a most heavy version of “we’re no here”—it’s brighter yet darker and bigger than on record and seems like its being played by twice as many guys. after 6 albums and over 10 years of touring, mogwai has their sound honed to a delicate yet powerful science and they’ve got so many songs to choose from that each night of this tour is a new experiment in sets. mogwai’s hawk is howling indeed.

http://amateurchemist.blogspot.com/2008/09/mogwai-at-wiltern.html

http://thescenestar.typepad.com/ss/2008/09/live-mogwai-fck.html

photos

http://www.losanjealous.com/2008/09/12/mogwai-the-wiltern-september-9-2008/

mogwai's us tour diary

from mogwai.co.uk:

drive to los angeles for a show at the wiltern. this is a very fine looking theatre indeed and has been extremely well maintained. what a shame they let a bunch of manky scottish neanderthals like us in the building. ally christie, one of our fellow countrymen though citizen of l.a, takes barry and stephen (our lovely sound engineer) to a macro-biotic restaurant where very healthy food is consumed with gusto then it’s back off to the venue to get ready for a show. this show was a bit of a stinker we thought and the tourettes victims were out in force. one exceptionally stupid man shouted for a song he happened to like halfway through a song we were playing. i do wonder what he thought this would achieve……let’s stop playing this and start doing requests. aye. we don’t do requests, not because we’re arrogant but because we’re literally unable to play most of the songs we haven’t practised for the tour. we’re really quite amateurish and not afraid to flaunt it. after the gig i met up with nice, drunk jim putnam from the radar bros. and also the scottish film director david mackenzie where we discuss making a movie about the sad and hopeless plight of fuck buttons. keanu reeves and alex winter will star in this tragic film. it will be called ben and andrew’s bogus journey and will go straight to dvd i hope. seeing as it's ben from fuck buttons' birthday tomorrow i feel it is time to let the less humour-savvy of you know that we actually love fuck buttons as people and as musicians, just in case we upset anyone. i saw someone thought it was serious on our forum and my brain did a 360 degree spin of disbelief.