Post-Rock. Pretentious or unparalleled? Whatever your view on this particular genre, it is hard to deny the influence of Glaswegian band Mogwai. Their latest is a song from the soundtrack of the multiple award winning film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. So is this post with the most or have they scored an own goal?
Ok, no more football analogies i promise. Suitably tense and atmospheric, Mogwai achieve an adequately subtle film score with Black Spider. However, they do not achieve much more. Stuart Braithwaite's intricately woven guitar melodies begin an outline of a promise but never develop to anything more intuitive or exciting. The sparse atmosphere is captivating for the first 20 seconds but then drifts into the recesses of background music.
Is this then the purpose? Not only is this Post-Rock in its classically meandering sense it is also the accompanying music to a film. Perhaps when coupled with said film the track becomes infinitely more understandable, but as a standalone piece of music this composition lacks the energy of previous releases such as Rock Action or Happy Songs For Happy People.
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