Mogwai

Hard to believe it’s been over a decade but Mogwai’s seminal debut has been repackaged and remastered as a deluxe edition to commemorate the album that arguably gave the world thousands of instrumental bands and helped turn the crescendo into a punch line. Why Mogwai have lasted is evident in Young Team’s personality and instrumentation. While most post-rock albums simply follow a banal "quiet to loud” behaviour pattern that switches on the guitars/drums/bass from half-asleep to explosive like clockwork, the ’Gwai always keep it unpredictable and varied while balancing the perfect amount of wistfulness and malevolence: the bone-chilling guitar scream in "Like Herod,” the starry night piano interlude of "Radar Maker,” the speaker-to-speaker streaming noise of "With Portfolio” and of course, "Mogwai Fear Satan,” the epic guitar freak-out that’s overshadowed by the tender flute lines. It was all a sign of the greatness to come. Making it deluxe is a second disc of hard-to-find goodies: a delightfully depressive unreleased gem called "Young Face Gone Wrong,” their hushed, by-the-numbers take on Spacemen 3’s "Honey” and the obligatory live cuts that demonstrate the volatile force these guys pack on stage. The defining package for the album that essentially defined post-rock.