{"id":669808,"date":"2026-05-28T09:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T09:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/669808\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T09:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T09:11:09","slug":"mogwais-stuart-braithwaite-reflects-on-30-year-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/669808\/","title":{"rendered":"Mogwai\u2019s Stuart Braithwaite Reflects on 30-Year Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSoft, loud, soft. Mogwai<\/a>\u2019s irrepressible wall of sound has been wailing out of amplifiers for three decades, unbowed, undented by fluctuations in pop culture. Undefeated. The Scottish post-rockers are a sonic force of nature, a swirling hurricane of guitars. Sometimes heavy, sometimes not. Soft, loud, soft.<\/p>\n

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\n\tFormed in Glasgow back in 1995, the four-piece stopped by the Sydney<\/a> Opera House last weekend for the ultimate 30th birthday bash (well, 31 now, but who\u2019s counting).<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom the very start, Mogwai has been independent. DIY, even. \u201cOnce in a while\u201d the major music companies would come knocking, frontman Stuart Braithwaite tells Billboard backstage ahead of the concert, a production for Vivid LIVE. \u201cYeah, well,\u201d he points out, \u201cwe are completely indie, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMogwai\u00a0owns, operates and releases its music through the Glasgow-based Rock Action Records<\/a>. That label, like the band, was established in the mid-1990s and remains fiercely independent. Today, it\u2019s home to a diverse roster of artists, including Arab Strap, The Twilight Sad, Kathryn Joseph, Cloth, Sacred Paws, Errors and Remember Remember. For North America, their music is released through the Brooklyn-based independent label Temporary Residence.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe band flexed those indie muscles with a show Saturday, May 23, at the Concert Hall within the iconic SOH. Mogwai is mostly instrumental, mostly guitars. With a setlist featuring \u201cYes! I Am a Long Way From Home,\u201d \u201cRitchie Sacramento,\u201d \u201cAuto Rock\u201d and the blistering encore \u201cMogwai Fear Satan,\u201d and playing against a backdrop of an all-purpose ridge, Mogwai reels the house in, fixes them in a trance. <\/p>\n

\n\tOn this occasion, Braithwaite is the only bandmate who chats with the audience. His banter rarely rises above a \u201cthank-you so much. Cheers.\u201d Mogwai let their respective instruments do the talking. On stage left, a Palestine flag tacked to a Marshall stack. A \u201csoft loud soft\u201d political statement.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore the sonic chaos and subtlety, Braithwaite reflects on his career highlights. And of lessons learned. He\u2019s reminded of the late Lou Reed, who in 2010, staged \u201cMusic for Dogs\u201d on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. \u201cThat\u2019s quite a painful memory for me because he actually asked us to come and play with them,\u201d he recounts. \u201cWe didn\u2019t do it, and then he died. To be honest, it was a teaching moment, as they say. Because I think anytime we get opportunities like that, we always really take them because you don\u2019t want to miss out. Especially with older (artists) because you don\u2019t know how long they\u2019re going to be around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBraithwaite\u2019s tracksuit has touches of green, a nod to his beloved Glasgow Celtic soccer club, which, some hours later, would complete the \u201cdouble\u201d by winning the Scottish Cup against Dunfermline Athletic, by a scoreline of 3-1. Mogwai had a massive win, too, during the pandemic. The band scored their first No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart in Feb. 2021 with As The Love Continues, their tenth studio LP.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYeah, that was crazy,\u201d he remembers. \u201cWhen I got the first chart through, I thought it was like the Scottish chart or the vinyl chart or something. Someone was like, \u2018no, that\u2019s the real chart. I was like \u2018wow.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAll up, they\u2019ve collected 11 appearances on the U.K. top 40 albums chart, including four top 10s, most recently with 2025\u2019s The Bad Fire, which peaked at No. 5. But a No. 1? \u201cThat was really cool. It wasn\u2019t even a dream come true because I don\u2019t think any of us had dreamed about it. It was just this insane thing to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are no immediate plans to release a 12th studio album, not this year. Or cut a soundtrack. \u201cI\u2019ve also got nothing to do next year, so yeah, I need to think of something,\u201d he quips. For the months ahead, Braithwaite and his bandmates (bassist Dominic Aitchison, drummer Martin Bulloch, and multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns) are soaking up their extended birthday party, which includes festival spots<\/a> across the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan\u2019s Fuji Rock.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s one thing about the anniversary is (we\u2019re) just really grateful that people are still coming to see us and want to hear our music. And yeah, it\u2019s pretty insane after a really long time,\u201d Braithwaite continues. \u201cAnd to get younger generations (to come along) as well. People that maybe, definitely, weren\u2019t even born when we started the band. Anyone under the age of 30, yeah, they weren\u2019t born when we started.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVivid LIVE<\/a>\u00a0is the annual contemporary music centerpiece of the Sydney Opera House, and part of the broader\u00a0Vivid Sydney<\/a>\u00a0festival, which runs through June 13. Vivid Sydney is owned, managed and produced by the New South Wales government, Destination NSW and Feel New Sydney.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soft, loud, soft. Mogwai\u2019s irrepressible wall of sound has been wailing out of amplifiers for three decades, unbowed,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[74839,115704,88,216,28671],"class_list":["post-669808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-bbnews","tag-billboard-uk","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}