Kelly Lee Owens, Wild Beasts and more quiz Mogwai; the band's Barry Burns talks 'Atomic'

It's the turn of fellow artists to quiz Braithwaite on Mogwai's time in the belly of the music industry beast, and following that Best Fit speaks to the band's multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns on their sountrack record.

Kelly Lee Owens asks "What are the biggest positive changes you'vee seen take place in the music industry in the past few years? Most of the time all people talk about are the negative changes ( including myself ) so I'm intrigued to hear what positives changes they feel have been made."

"I think availability and accessibility of music. We were talking earlier that you had to hear a song on the radio, or you had to buy it. Now, you could tell me about the most obscure b-side by the most obscure band and I could play it on YouTube on my phone. And I know that means musicians make less money from selling their music to people, but it changes the attitude towards music. You know yourself that there are bands people would find it scandalous to admit that you like, but it’s got to the point now that everyone knows those bands have got a couple of good songs. I think it’s taken away a lot of the snobbery of music, it’s democratised it. It also means a band like us can go and play places like, I dunno, Taiwan!”

Nestor Matthews, Menace Beach / Sky Larkin: "Having been floored by your collaboration with Mark Cousins on Atomic, Living in Dread and Promise I wonder if you find composing music for a soundtrack or score liberating in that the narrative trajectory of the piece is, to an extent, already visually mapped out, or is there a latent pressure to match or parallel the director's vision that isn't a factor when writing music as Mogwai for Mogwai?"

“I think it is quite liberating, because we’ve never been the kind of band to write a song about an experience or write a piece of music about a feeling…we just write music and it is what it is. So with Atomic, you have to do something that fits with something really devastating and really weighty. It’s quite an inspiring thing to do, rather than liberating. The Atomic soundtracks were my favourite things that we’ve done."

Mark Daman Thomas, Shape Records / Islet: "I've noticed that bands like Mogwai are increasingly rare as solo artists become increasingly common. What are the advantages of writing and performing collaboratively as a band?”

“Not being a solo artist I can’t make much of a comparison; these days when there’s not much tour support it’s probably easier to get one person round the country. There’s probably more pressure; we kind of share out the responsibilities and you can’t do that on your own…I’d never thought about that, there are a lot of solo-type people. I wonder if that is based on practical elements like ‘how are we going to get five people round the country’.”

Katie Harkin, Sky Larkin / Sleater-Kinney: "What, if anything, has been the biggest misconception about your band? And if so, how has that changed over your 20 year career?"

“People used to think we were really serious because our music is pretty serious…but I think we burst that bubble a long time ago by doing quite a lot of stupid things, saying stupid things and having stupid song titles…that probably all played a part!”

Jim Dixon, Django Django: "I first discovered your music when I was studying in Glasgow. In particular Come On Die Young became completely synonymous with the city itself. How did Glasgow inform your music, and how would you describe the relationship between the two?”

“I think it’s probably so entrenched that it’s hard to put into words. When we started out there was such a strong music community…Eska, Yummy Fur, Delgados, the Blisters. Just the fact that 13th Note would book you four times in a row! It would all inform what we did, in a weird way. Even though we loved and admired all those bands, the only other instrumental act at the time was Ganger…who we did tour with and were an absolutely brilliant band.”

Tom Fleming of Wild Beasts: "After all the acclaim over your albums and soundtrack work, I was astonished to read that Rave Tapes was your first top ten record?! How close do you think the mainstream has sailed to you over the years?”

“I don’t know…there are some pretty mainstream bands I can hear our music in, to be totally honest! There was a little while where our music was used in places…it was even used in The X Factor, and you can’t get more mainstream than that. I think it was used when someone was crying, one of those montages…I can’t even remember which song it was [an internet search suggests it was something from Come On Die Young].”

Inventions [members of Explosions in the Sky and Eluvium]: "If you could invent a pedal, what would it do?"

“Oh man! I’m just so lazy I’d just want something that did a few things at once. I actually just got a pedal that’s distortion and tremolo, it’s a belter. I’d have one that did a few things, maybe one that did delay and distortion as I’m getting a bit too old to do the splits.”

Barry Burns on Atomic and the band's future:

Was there always a plan to make a full record from the television soundtrack?

“I think if we’d done it [the TV soundtrack] and it turned out just okay we probably wouldn’t have, but it turned out it was something really worth releasing. So we went in and worked on them a wee bit more and made them into song length – some were just cues for film and they weren’t very long, so we just expanded on them.”

Did Mark Cousins give you any sort of guide as to what he wanted? Did you see any of the footage before you wrote the music?

"We saw bits of it eventually but we were given a really detailed description of what it was about, he explained all the parts of it and asked whether or not we could make music for it. You can kind of tell it’s not going to be super happy when it’s about atomic bombs haha!”

Did he leave you to your own devices during recording?

“Aye, he just let us get on with it. We were sending him lots of demos, every couple of days to see what would fit in and what he liked and would want to use.”

It's definitely one of Mogwai's most downbeat and intense records...

“Aye, I suppose it is! I guess we knew it had to be because of the subject matter…it’s funny when you’ve got that to think about rather than just making an album. It heightens something for sure, and I think it worked out quite well.”

Did the band know much about the period or what happened at Hiroshima?

“I’m trying to remember if we had a show there [Hiroshima] or we just went there on a day off in Japan, to go see the museum. We went anyway and it was really fucking depressing, brutal. There were melted bicycles and stuff like that, it was really scary. I remember when I was a kid watching Where The Wind Blows, or Reds, stuff like that – you were always conscious of it as a kid and a teenager but it wasn’t something I had a connection with really.”

Was there anything that surprised the band when researching or watching the actual documentary film?

“Aye! The racism towards Japanese people was a bit of an eye-opener! That’s war I suppose; but some of the footage and hearing what people were saying, people’s reactions when they were being interviewed…kind of expected I guess but fucking hell…”

It's something that's back in the news due to the renewal of Trident and someone like Jeremy Corbyn's opposition to it...do you think this record will have more of an impact as a result?

“I’d love to think so, but nobody listens to anyone. They just plough ahead and do what they want – if they want to renew it, they’ll renew it. So much for someone representing what you think in Parliament….that’s really pessimistic, eh!”

There are plans in place to play the album in full, right?

“Yeah, it’s going to be good to go and play it in Hiroshima. We were trying to get Mark over for it but I think he’s busy. That would have been really special.”

I have to ask about John Cumming leaving the band after twenty years...how does it feel being a four-piece?

“I think…it’s hard to tell really. We did the record after he told us last year, and when we did the updated version John had left by that point, so he’s not on it at all. I think it’s different sounding because of that, and I think the next album will also be different sounding because of it. But a change is as good as a whatever you call it haha! He’s probably happy not doing something he didn’t enjoy anymore. We had to do a show quite quickly after he left, and we had to get Scott from Sons and Daughters in to rehearse for a week. But it was actually fine, and it wasn’t that weird because we all know Scott really well. But we’re not going to have an extra guitarist, it’ll just be the four of us from now on.”

Atomic is out now via Rock Action Records.