Mogwai

The first and, up to now, only time I saw Mogwai, it was almost by accident, seeking refuge from an oversubscribed Killers set at Latitude festival. They played to a near empty tent, building what I described as a cathedral of sound. Brimming with epiphanous expectation, therefore, I entered the LCR ready and willing to worship at the altar of their magnificence. Sadly, it didn't quite work out that way.

Something else that didn't work out as expected was Mogwai's support, having been warned that Forest Swords consisted of little more than a man in a baseball cap twiddling knobs. No baseball hat for a start, and - granted - knob twiddling did take place, but what extraordinary, otherworldly soundscapes were conjured up. Unique is an overused word, but I am struggling to find a helpful comparison to the densely layered and frequently unsettling noises produced from his desktop box of tricks. The soundtrack to the film Eraserhead comes to mind, and that is the best I can do. I remain unsure if this constituted a live performance - the ability of Fatboy Slim or the Chemical Brothers to fill arenas doing much the same bewilders me - but the sounds produced were, if not exactly entertaining, certainly arresting. Staging was limited to insane amounts of smoke (mid-set he could have popped out for a sneaky fag and we'd have been none the wiser) and a ghostly refracted light, only occasionally catching his skittering around his console. I'm not sure I'd want to revisit the live experience again in a hurry, but as support acts go, this was a definitive cut above.

And so to Mogwai, and a headache of a problem. How best to fairly describe a largely instrumental performance of eardrum-shredding music beloved by those familiar with Ritchie Sacramento, Fanzine Made of Flesh or Mogwai Fear Satan? Bearing in mind the set also included How to Be a Werewolf, Pale Vegan Hip Pain and Hunted by a Freak, it's fairly clear that Stuart Braithwaite and Co enjoy playing silly buggers when it comes to song titles. Barring a couple of ill-advised attempts at singing by Mr Braithwaite in which, to my ears, indecipherable lyrics presumably spoke of something, their compositions should be seen, and of course heard, as abstractions. "So what are we going to call this one, lads?" you can imagine Braithwaite asking, chuckling away.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I've cribbed much of that info from someone who knows them so much better than me and who judged them excellent. I thought them excellent last time, and surely not just because I was excused singalong Killers duty. I'm still wondering if I was wrong then or now. This time round, the music, albeit expertly delivered, seemed to conform too closely to a template I wearied of. Listening to Mogwai felt like settling into a very well-made formula, as if I was now peeking around the wizard's curtain. First, the hushed, glistening intro, then the patiently paced, almost stubbornly reluctant build, followed by the inevitable wall of distortion that arrives as surely as fingers are jammed in ears. At times this felt less about composition and more akin to ritual.

Having spent my formative years watching bearded blokes standing still while mordantly hammering away at their instruments, I had no problem at all with Mogwai's Easter Island Statue approach to stage craft. The lighting was in any case suitably distracting, and not only did Braithwaite jump about a bit, he was positively chummy in between tunes. All the things Mogwai get ribbed for didn't bother me at all. And there were moments when the music soared. But to me these were fragmentary moments, after which tunes ended too soon and inauspiciously. I got no sense of an overarching trajectory to the evening. When I think of bands as disparate as Fuck Buttons, Sigur Rós and The Enid, what they share is a sense of scale and ambition. That can often be recast as portentous pretension - something Mogwai's silliness in song titles perhaps intends to puncture - but it's nonetheless something I turned up hoping for and sadly felt the evening lacked.

Wiser counsel than I will determine whether Mogwai is simply not for me, or that even their disciples doubted the new stuff. I did think it striking the crowd waited in near silence for the obligatory encore. Pockets of foot stamping and clapping occurred, but didn't catch on. I may well have been projecting, but I don't think the crowd was wowed. What a pity, if so, as it was generally one of the best-behaved audiences I've had the pleasure to share company with. Midway through that final number, when cacophony had been replaced by a single plaintive guitar, what struck me was what else I could hear, which was absolutely nothing. Here was a room full of people, respecting the artist instead of incessantly chattering. If only all gigs could be like that