initial cd copies include a bonus dvd - a 40-minute documentary titled "the recording of mr beast"
track lengths mean that the double vinyl pressing has three sides of music and an etching of the 'myt' logo on the fourth side.

sleeve artwork by amanda church.
http://www.amandachurch.ca/
read our interview with amanda: amandachurchitw_feb06.php

in the run-up to release, a number of alternate versions were made available via digital retailers:

charted at no.31 in the uk (12th march 2006)

international release dates

japan: 25th feb 2006
usa: 7th march 2006

catalogue numbers etc.

cd: pias [piasx062cd]
cd + dvd: pias [piasxcd062cdltd]
2xlp: pias [piasx062dlp]
us cd: matador [ole-681]
us cd+dvd: matador [ole-681]
us 2xlp: matador [ole-698]
japan cd: hostess [HSE31002]
australia cd: spunk [URA174]

promos

promo cd - front and rear sleeve

pias also produced a promo EPK, with a 13-minute film of mogwai interviewed prior to the release of 'mr beast' intercut with studio footage from the album sessions and live footage from the show at abc, glasgow (18th august 2005).

production/recording notes

fifth album. recorded at mogwai's new 'castle of doom' studio, glasgow. produced by tony doogan.

mogwai spent april to october 2005 writing and recording a new album in glasgow. mixing was completed in mid-october.

some of the tracks have been played live under alternate titles ('glasgow megasnake' was previously known as 'glower of a cat', 'misery' has been retitled 'team handed'). other titles mentioned but absent from the finished record include 'black keys' and 'robocop vs. the orange walk' (this later surfaced on 'the hawk is howling' (2008) under the title 'scotland's shame'). 'sea shanty' was the working title of a song abandoned during the sessions.

'acid food' is sung by stuart, 'travel is dangerous' is sung by barry.
'i chose horses' includes vocals from tetsuya fukagawa (envy) and keyboards from craig armstrong.

"i chose horses: this was a quote from alan rough who is an old goal keeper (scotland, celtic, partick thistle) on the frankly terrible real radio football phone in. he was asked why he hadn't gone in to coaching and he replied "some players turn to management, i chose horses". this amused us immensely." - stuart, july 2008

a number of the other song titles came from engrish.com - 'emergency trap,', 'acid food', and 'auto rock' for starters.

writing credits (from chrysalis music publishing):
auto rock - francis barry burns
acid food - stuart braithwaite
emergency trap - stuart braithwaite, francis barry burns
folk death 95 - john cummings
friend of the night - francis barry burns
glasgow mega-snake - francis barry burns, john cummings
i chose horses - stuart braithwaite, tetsuya fukagawa
team handed - francis barry burns
travel is dangerous - john cummings, francis barry burns
we're no here - francis barry burns

pias press release

since their formation in 1995, mogwai have become one of the uk’s most respected and vital bands. while many others have come and gone, mogwai have operated under the mainstream radar, happy in their outsiders status. their unwavering self-belief and ever-evolving sound has accompanied their rise from humble beginnings in glasgow to world-wide notoriety as one of the greatest guitar bands of our time.

in march 2006, mogwai will release their 5th studio album "mr beast", the follow-up to 2003’s "happy songs for happy people". it was recorded in the band’s new castle of doom studio in glasgow between april and october 2005 with producer tony doogan. as the title suggests, this is a record of considerable size and weight - a monster creation that started out as a return to the heady, bone-crushing volume and intensity of earlier recordings, and then mutated into a many headed, many mooded beast. here we find the ominous death-toll of opener 'auto rock' followed by the head-crushing army of guitars that is 'glasgow mega-snake', alongside the contrasting neo-classical piano passages of single 'friend of the night' and the beautiful melancholy of 'i chose horses' which features tetsuya fukagawa of japanese hardcore band envy on vocals and a keyboard contribution from composer/arranger craig armstrong.

since the release of "happy songs...", mogwai have toured the states on the curiosa tour, at the request of robert smith, played all tomorrow’s parties at the request of slint and played dates in japan and china. in january ‘05 they released a compilation of bbc live recordings spanning 1996-2003 from john peel and steve lamacq sessions. mogwai continue to spin a fine line in remixes and have more recently reworked tracks by boom bip, bloc party, earth, engineers and kid 606.

a special limited edition cd of the album will include a dvd with a documentary - "the recording of mr beast"

matador press release

these days - when membership of the rock army can be symbolised by the simple purchase of a ramones t-shirt - dedication has become a debased currency, subject to the hyper-inflationary dictates of fashion. raw recruits sign up for the short term, soon surrendering their affections to whichever sexy "scene" might spring up next. unswerving commitment to rock's righteous cause is rare; it demands a troop of seriously single-minded dudes with their collective heart and soul fixed on one goal - to bring the noise.

scottish five piece mogwai formed in 1995 and debuted a year later with the single "tuner/lower", released on their own rock action label. they've since gone on to develop their distinctive style of apocalyptic, yet deeply humanised noise across four albums, establishing the transcendentally effective quiet-loud/quiet-loud dynamic as their very own and spawning a generation of imitators. usually tagged a post-rock band because of their slow-build, instrumental workouts and the neo-classical majesty of their more ambitious songs, mogwai are rather a bunch of a-rockers, drawn to whatever serves their cause - be it the stripped-down delicacy of erik satie or the boiling rage of big black. mix light and dark together, mogwai understand, and you make magic.

"mr beast" is the band's fifth studio album and, as the title suggests, sees them returning to their first, true love - rock with a capital "r" - after using a softer palette with more varied instrumentation for album number three ("rock action") and delivering a balanced summary of their work to date with 2003's "happy songs for happy people". mogwai of course, make their own rules in order to break them, so, alongside huge blocks of thrillingly implacable guitar noise, "mr beast" features exquisitely poignant piano passages (most of them played by keyboardist/guitarist/vocalist barry burns) and great, limpid spaces.

guitarist/vocalist stuart braithwaite explains the album's impetus thus: "we consciously tried to have some louder music on this album, because we had begun to realise that there was a big difference between our live shows and our records, and there was no real reason for that. we wanted to make a record that we were going to enjoy playing live, because when we're on stage, we like the songs where we're really going for it more than the ones where we're just kind of plinking away.

"the quiet-loud/quiet-loud formula that was our trademark became pretty clichéd," he adds, "and also a lot of other people started doing it, so we consciously tried to stop. not that we invented it, but it got to the point where people thought that was all we did, plus we were getting tired of it ourselves. we'd taken it to extremes on songs like "like herod" [from 1997's mogwai "young team"] and we thought there wasn't much further we could go with it. what we ended up doing then was being really quiet and minimal, but later we realised that we really missed making a lot of noise! now felt like a good time to get back to that, because in a way, it's what started the band. although only about 25 per cent of the new album is actually noise, that's the one thing we consciously had in mind when we set out."

recorded between april and october 2005 in the band's own castle of doom studios in glasgow, "mr beast" was produced by tony doogan, who also produced "happy songs. . ." and was the engineer on "rock action". it opens with "auto rock" - whose sweetly melancholic, central piano motif is gradually engulfed by a swell of fulsome guitars and pummelling drum beats - and closes with lurching, psych-rock behemoth "we're no here" (sic). in between are eight future mogwai classics, including the heads-down "glasgow mega-snake", where what must surely be a dozen guitars swarm around a molten metal core like crazed killer bees, the drum machine-driven country gospel of "acid food," which features pedal-steel guitar, the wintry splendour of "friend of the night" and the impossibly poignant "i chose horses," featuring guest vocalist tetsuya fukagawa (of japanese hardcore band envy) and a keyboard contribution from composer/arranger craig armstrong. whether light and lean or dark and monstrous, however, these songs underline mogwai's belief that to have meaning, rock needs both mass and monumentality. if "mr beast" has one thing, it's presence.

"i like music that has weight," admits braithwaite, "even if it's not sound weight. if i think of a really 'heavy' record, i think of 'songs of love and hate' by leonard cohen as much as i think of the latest record by sunn o))). it is a bit weird when people think our music is depressing, because i find bad music depressing and we all think sad music is incredibly uplifting. even if a piece of music is melancholic, if it makes you think, or has some weight to it, then i find that really uplifting. it's like seeing a beautiful painting - it makes your day a bit better."

of mogwai's continued interest in pushing their own parameters, braithwaite declares, "we didn't want to be a band that made a few good records and then made a series of increasingly shitty ones that were like fading photocopies of the earlier records. i've seen that happen a lot of times. the fact is, none of us can do anything else - it's not like we dropped out of architecture school and can go back to it one day! we knew we were in this for the long haul and we knew we wanted to be making worthwhile, important music until the day our hands stop working, so it serves our purpose to challenge ourselves, on every level."

the beauty expressed by "mr beast" is the sound of those challenges being met - fearlessly. as to the noise, it's mogwai's design for life. -- sharon o'connell

review scans

kerrang	mojo
rock sound	nme
q

review links

transformonline

bbc collective

daily telegraph [4th march 2006]

the guardian [4th march 2006]

the times [4th march 2006]

intro.de

pitchfork

xfm

review from aquarius records

when we first heard mogwai's young team record almost a decade ago, we were knocked on our asses. that was exactly what we had been itching to hear but just didn't know it. epic near-metal post rock, dramatic and ultra dynamic, soft / loud moody indie rock epics. taking bits and pieces from the pixies and slint and other bands that came before but making them into something wholly new and unique. and thus was spawned band after band, from godspeed to the current crop of metallic post rock to the brooding instrumental indie rock of bands like explosions in the sky. all of them owe a massive debt to mogwai, and young team in particular. after young team, mogwai continued to do what they did arguably better than anyone else, each record a subtle variation on the last, one was more consistently louder, one was softer and dreamier, the next was a "return to the ultra dynamism of young team" the next was something completely new and different. ultimately though, they all sounded like mogwai, and if there was such thing as a cd that held 12 hours of music, they all could have come from that single 12 hour album. but who was complaining? not us. we loved the sound of mogwai, and didn't want them to change, sure we would have dug another young team, but it was joy to get a new mogwai record every time, that was instantly familiar, but had enough new stuff going on that it kept things interesting. and so it went for almost a decade, which brings us to mr. beast. and on the one hand, it perfectly keeps with the pattern, it's most definitely mogwai, sonically there's no doubt about that, but on the other, this is a very weird record. for mogwai at least. to begin with, the songs are all pretty short, none break the six minute mark, most hover at around four, but the devil is in the details, and you know how the devil always has the best music...

the sound on mr. beast is much more dense and polished, some songs are straight up guitar heavy shoegazing rockers, some are haunting lullabies with programmed drums and lap steel guitars. a couple tracks sound almost like coldplay with balls (and bigger guitars), there's lots of piano, in fact the first song is almost entirely piano driven, as are a couple later on in the record, there are some very flaming lips moments, lush pop with big drums, some bits of polvo-like angular indie jangle, even some full on metal riffing, but they all sound like mogwai. and that's the key. it all sounds so effortless, so perfect. not in a bad way, in that special way that few bands ever achieve. it's like if mogwai suddenly decided to do a note for note cover of brooks and dunn or pink or slayer or anybody, it would still sound like mogwai, or if they decided to only play skiffle or bluegrass or polka, you'd still hear it and immediately know it was mogwai, and it would be really really good.

it's that effortlessness that makes this record so good. like their records before mr. beast, familiar enough to fit comfortably in the canon, new and weird enough to make us love them all over again.

review from the birmingham post by simon harper

the glasgow quintet return with their fifth studio album, capturing all of the disparate strands of their oeuvre - 'we’re no here' and 'glasgow mega-snake' are the kind of colossal noise assaults not heard since their stunning debut young team.
but mogwai now seem more assured on songs such as 'acid food', with its use of pedal steel guitar and skittering beats. the standout track, though, is opener 'auto rock', all heavy piano chords and propulsive rhythms. alan mcgee called it the best record he’s worked on since mbv’s loveless. while not reaching those heights, it’s a hugely enjoyable listen.
4 stars

review from piccadilly records

"mr beast" is the band's fifth album and the follow-up to 2003's "happy songs for happy people" and was recorded in the band's new castle of doom studio in glasgow. as the title suggests, this is a record of considerable size and weight - a monster creation that started out as a return to the heady, bone-crushing volume and intensity of earlier recordings, and then mutated into a many headed, many mooded beast. it opens with "auto rock" - whose sweetly melancholic, central piano motif is gradually engulfed by a swell of fulsome guitars and pummelling drum beats - and closes with lurching, psych-rock behemoth "we're no here". in between are eight future mogwai classics, including the heads-down "glasgow mega-snake", where what must surely be a dozen guitars swarm around a molten metal core like crazed killer bees, the drum machine-driven country gospel of "acid food", which features pedal-steel guitar, the wintry splendour of "friend of the night" and the impossibly poignant "i chose horses", featuring guest vocalist tetsuya fukagawa (of japanese hardcore band envy) and a keyboard contribution from composer/arranger craig armstrong. whether light and lean or dark and monstrous, however, these songs underline mogwai's belief that to have meaning, rock needs both mass and monumentality. if "mr beast" has one thing, it's presence.

review from boomkat (album of the week)

christmas day in the mogwai commune; "oooh, what's this? it's ever so big, can i unwrap it? oh! a piano, just what i've always wanted..." and so it began. having released five studio albums in their eleven year career, 'mr beast' (produced by tony doogan) sees the the 'gwai getting back to their tinnitus roots after the slow-burn atmospherics of 'rock action', with intricate and bewitching melodies (usually on a piano courtesy of the wonderful craig armstrong) dismantled from within by axe-wielding riffs and cathartic bluster. opening with 'auto rock', stuart braithwaite et al announce their intent with a piano melody so pretty it should have a pink bow in its hair; a vision they incrementally enhance through spiralling guitars, apocalyptic drums and a core of noise that converts the melancholic into a chorus of unabandonded joy. the closest they've ever come to translating their incendiary live shows onto a box-ready slab of plastic, songs like 'glasgow mega-snake' and 'we're no hear' are unapologetic furnaces of sound, wherein multiple riff pile-ups converge in an apex of orgiastic rightness. elsewhere, 'i chose horses' drafts in tetsuya fukagawa (of japanese hardcore band envy) to lexicalise the sense of wonder played out beneath through glazed strings, 'travel is dangerous' resembles a cross between 'take me somewhere nice' ('rock action') and 'christmas steps', whilst 'acid food' borrows some xylophone from thom yorke and peps it up with electronic rice krispies. beastly boys....

review from questionable content

the new mogwai record mr. beast is out, and it is fucking great! it's like a condensed, super-potent version of their live shows, and i think it's their best album since their first one (the classic 'young team'). if you like really, really loud guitars, you owe it to yourself to get your hands on this record.

review from plan b by nicola meighan

should one seek the definition of a 'glasgow mega-snake', one need tlook no further than glasgow noise leviathans mogwai - said slithering, infinite weedgie reptilian features on this, their fifth studio album, and it is typified like so: a colossal wall of guitar blare; a sky-high wrack of sick distortion.

should one seek a definition of the word 'force', one need look no further than towering psyche-hulk 'we're no here'; or - and expounding mogwai's gripping sonic paradox - the sublime piono refrains that serenade (amongst others) 'i chose horses', which features craig armstrong and envy's tetsuya fukagawa.

should one seek a definition of the band mogwai, one need look no further than 'mr beast' - their finest, loudest album for years, readily worthy of 'come on die young' or 'young team', thanks to its precious, leaden properties; euphoric guitar doom, dark metal excellence and transcendent, melancholic wonder.