There have been several noteworthy exceptions to MogwaiвЂ™s customary stance as an instrumental band over the years, from R U Still in 2 It, featuring Aidan Moffat of fellow 90s Scottish miscreants Arab Strap, to Dial: Revenge, featuring words in Welsh by Gruff Rhys from the Super Furry Animals. Which, considering how loud Mogwai shows are, tends to be a lot of people. No matter how many times you might have heard Mogwai Fear Satan previously (itвЂ™s another staple of the Mogwai live set), it remains impossible to tell exactly when the woozy, flute-licked looping passage at the songвЂ™s deceptively mellow core is suddenly going to explode back into life and scare the hell out of everyone in earshot. Listen to the supreme live version of this track on 2010вЂ™s live album Special Moves вЂ“ or better still, watch said version in the accompanying concert film Burning by French directors Vincent Moon and NathanaГ«l Le Scouarnec. The fiercely beautiful two-chord, 16-minute climax of their first album proper, 1997вЂ™s Mogwai Young Team, expands the quiet-loud formula to the effect of quiet-loud-quieter-LOUDER. Mogwai Fear Satan is the track most liable to cause heart palpitations. Much is made of MogwaiвЂ™s musicвЂ™s propensity to mess with your physical faculties вЂ“ be it high, distorted frequencies to sear your eardrums or low end to liquidise your guts.

The most beautiful thing to come out of Cowdenbeath since, well, ever. Dominic AitchisonвЂ™s melodic bassline provides the backbone for four dreamy minutes of delay-pedal-swollen guitars, swirling organ and weird pitch-shifted samples like the sound of a dying wasp, which together eschew the shock tactic of some earlier material in favour of a steady textural glow. Initially released in 1999 on an untitled EP issued by MogwaiвЂ™s first label, Chemikal Underground, this is surely the most stunning of all early Mogwai rarities. A studio in Cowdenbeath gave birth to Stanley Kubrick. Hugely prolific in their first few years, Mogwai released a string of EPs and singles between 19 containing all kinds of treasured non-album offcuts and oddities, from the trippy electronic jam Superheroes of BMX to Burn Girl Prom Queen, a slow sigh of guitar and horns featuring an unlikely cameo from the Cowdenbeath Brass Band. Helicon 1 has ever since been an anchor in MogwaiвЂ™s live set and the ultimate manifestation of the quiet-loud formula that defined their embryonic phase вЂ“ a brutal-sweet symphony which, like the best of Mogwai songs, is poised between giving you a manly hug and sticking the head in you. It made No 2 on John PeelвЂ™s 1997 festive 50 (Peel proved instrumental in boosting Mogwai, inviting them for five sessions between 19, some of which are on the 2005 BBC album Government Commissions). Arriving two years after they formed, Helicon 1 was one of the first pieces of music Mogwai ever released, a limited-edition single better recognised today for its inclusion on the compilation album Ten Rapid. Over the years, they would create their own strange iconography by dressing in Kappa tracksuits, picking song and album titles invoking all from Glasgow gang culture (Mogwai Young Team) to surreal in-jokes (Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up) to, um, Scottish football referees (Hugh Dallas). In the late 1990s Mogwai arrived like a brick through the window of Britpop in its death throes: they could say more with a dark, spare, mysterious guitar instrumental than any number of Oasis copyists could in a thousand insipid strums.

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