![\"Mogwai](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Mogwai-2025-Steve-Gullick-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Steve Gullick)<\/p>\n
Sat 20 September 2025 10:00, UK <\/p>\n
Though their name was famously a reference to the cute and furry \u201cGizmo\u201d creature from the film Gremlins, the Scottish post-rock outfit Mogwai<\/a> built their fanbase by metaphorically \u201cfeeding after midnight,\u201d as the movie lore goes\u2014routinely shedding their sweeter melodic sensibilities for effects-laden, blow-torch hot guitar riffage more befitting of the slimy Gremlin monsters themselves.<\/p>\n Rarely bothering to include any vocals on their early albums in the late 1990s, Mogwai\u2019s mystery was another appealing part of the package, enabling them to entice curious listeners from the worlds of indie rock, metal, shoegaze, and avant-garde jazz and electronic music. <\/p>\n They were hailed as forerunners of a new genre\u2014post-rock<\/a>\u2014and while they didn\u2019t love the label, they were certainly happy to take aim at the status quo of British guitar music if the invite was out there. Specifically, Mogwai made no bones about their gleeful disdain for Britpop, the \u201890s phenomenon that was just limping to the finish line of its glory days.<\/p>\n Mogwai guitarist and sometimes vocalist Stuart Braithwaite, who didn\u2019t hesitate to praise everyone from The Cure to Mudhoney to Slayer, had no such love for Britpop\u2019s endless droves of \u201cfucking cunts in tight Adidas shirts,\u201d as he once infamously summed it up. In fairness, Braithwaite seemed to have it out for just about anybody decked out in Adidas, as he was equally pleased to slag off then-newcomers Korn and Limp Bizkit as \u201cpseudo-heavy\u201d and \u201cquite weak.\u201d <\/p>\n Nobody suffered the wrath of Braithwaite\u2019s amateur insult comedy worse, however, than one Britpop act in particular. Blur<\/a>, for whatever reason, represented everything Mogwai disliked about popular music in late \u201890s Britain. Maybe it was the clothes, the poshness, the pretend un-poshness, the harpsichords. Either way, the Essex quartet weren\u2019t just deemed \u201cone of the weakest bands on the planet\u201d by Braithwaite, he also took the step of merchandising that opinion\u2014selling t-shirts at Mogwai gigs that made no mention of Mogwai at all, and simply read \u201cBlur Are Shite.\u201d They sold out in a hurry during the Leeds and Reading festivals in 1999.<\/p>\n \u201c[The slogan on the shirt] is written like a dictionary definition because it\u2019s fact,\u201d Braithwaite told Seattle\u2019s Rocket newspaper that year, chuckling through his response. \u201cI\u2019ve already said that if there are legal problems with it then I\u2019m willing to go to court as someone who has studied music and can prove they are shite.\u201d<\/p>\n