Pitchfork Forkcast: New Music: Mogwai: "Time and a Half"

New Music: Mogwai: "Time and a Half"

After enough critics compared Mogwai's extended guitar instrumentals to a film soundtrack, the Glasgow post-rockers finally went out and recorded one. The laid-back "Time and a Half" comes from Mogwai's score for Zidane: A 21st-Century Portrait, the widely acclaimed prologue to a head-butt directed by Douglas Gordon with Philippe Parren. Except the last thing the soundtrack-- released last year in the UK and this month in the U.S.-- sounds like it would do is get red carded for violent conduct; somnolent keyboard figures repeat, the guitars and drums cresting and ebbing gently. Unlike some of Mogwai's earlier work, "Time and a Half" may not surprise you, but it does, as Pitchfork's Rob Mitchum writes in his album review, succeed in establishing a mood. The drama is in the tension, the slight changes as the piece develops.

[from Zidane: A 21st-Century Portrait OST; out now on PIAS (U.S.) and Wall of Sound (UK)]