Mogwai Young Team - Mogwai

This was the first Mogwai album I had brought and to be honest I was quite sceptical. I had first heard of them after watching them as they supported the Manics on their tour a few years ago. I was not impressed. Two years later, I began increasingly intrigued by their music – I don’t know why but I guess it was because I was just tired of being tormented with manufactured pop bands, geeky nobodies with one-hit wonders and freaks like Limp Bizkit and Slipknot. And so I risked buying this album. ‘Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home’ starts the proceedings with a sample of a woman nervously chattering, which merges into a gentle bass-line and ...  Read the complete review

Once in a while there's an album that comes along and doesn't sound quite like anything else you've heard before. Well back in 1997 when I picked up this album I didn't realise a unique specimen I was adding to my collection. Now there is a somewhat golden rule that if your doing guitar based music in a band you must have vocals or at least keep it short – well Mogwai disregarded this and went forth and produced an album with some brooding monsters on it. Other bands have tried to do away with vocals for individual tracks and even these rarely succeed in my view, so it really was a very brave move to release an album with all bar one of ...  Read the complete review

Young Team is Mogwai’s finest effort to date. It's more polished and professional than its predecessor Ten Rapid, and thus the logical next purchase for fans of said album. It also beats Come On Die Young, their most recent - and darkest - album hands down, being on the whole a more uplifting experience, and so more enjoyable to listen to. Young Team is bristling with incredibly powerful tracks from the word go. The opener, Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home is typically climactic Mogwai stuff - if you like this track, you'll almost certainly like the rest of the album. For an even better taster, listen to both this and track 2, the latter ...  Read the complete review

Mogwai's debut album which came out on the well respected indie label Chemikal Underground, (owned by The Delgados) is without a doubt one of the greatest albums of '97. Sadly, being on an indie label meant that this great album wasn't panned as much as Radiohead or The Verve at the time, and that was criminal; this is an album that deserves to be heard, but admittedly doesn't have mass appeal, unless you're into, or think you can get into emotional effect laden epic rock instrumentals, and Mogwai definetly are the leaders in that at the moment. The 10 track album is a bit of an arty affair with bits of conversation, and intolerable but ...  Read the complete review

Mogwai Young Team was the first of many highly acclaimed albums by the scottish post-rock band. With an interesting take on music, the fact that it doesnt all have to have words, to be instrumental is a virtue. Varying rates, tempo and tones can make a beautiful, exciting and influential song without the need of words. One exception to this is "R U Still In2 It", which is still not the most lyrically fulfilled work ever. The band themselves appeared to dislike how the album was made, however they did not see the allmighty spectre that was to be unleashed under the name Mogwai. Although perhaps not as well constructed as their later albums, a few ...  Read the complete review