Young Team

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ALBUM INFORMATION
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Total Tracks: 19   Total Length: 111:01

eMusic Review

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Todd Burns

eMusic Contributor

05.19.08
The stunning debut album from the famed Scottish post-rockers.
2008 | Label: Chemikal Underground / Iris

Bass guitarist Dominic Aitchison is listed as “DEMONIC” in the liner notes to Mogwai's Young Team. Yep. Sounds about right. The Scottish quartet's debut album is a vicious one, full of viscous guitar feedback, serrated riffs and a healthy dose of anger. It's the glorious sound of guitars being unleashed to their full volume potential. It's the sound of four dudes getting together and making a racket.

The thing that made Mogwai so beloved, though, was the presence of the complete opposite as well. “Like Herod”'s explosive climaxes would be nothing without equal bouts of patient melodicism. “Radar Maker” and “With Portfolio” would merely be ambient curiosities, if they weren't besieged by a torrential downpour of guitar on either side.

Young Team is often called Mogwai's finest moment, though guitarist Stuart Braithwaite once complained that when it was recorded, the group was “young and naïve and had too little time.” The truth is that it's both. Far from the disaster that Braithwaite believed it to be, Young Team benefits from youthful indiscretion. There is raw energy flowing through it, even though Mogwai clearly were already working within the soft-loud/crescendocore template that would define them.

This recklessness is perfectly captured by Arab Strap's Aidan… read more »

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Boooo!

Leafsfool

Booo to emusic for making you buy a rarities disc to get tracks 2 and 10 of the original LP. Booooo!

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Why is this 24 credits?

whenelvisdied

Why 24? The total tracks from the two albums add up to 19...what gives emusic?

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young = good

KPP

While not as epic and stately as their later work, this has a raweness and energy to it that makes it special. OK, you always have a soft spot for the 1st LP you hear from a favourite band, but this is bigtimedoubleplusgood. Opening track: "If the stars had a sound it would sound like this" says it all.

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cotton candy LSD

superpurpleskunk

got to wait for next month to get disc 2, disc 1 simply amazing. Tracy is awsome like VilliSvan said :D Killer Diller album.

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great album, bonus disk as well

mattk

I've had this album for a while, and the bonus disk is a nice treat. Man, Mogwai is completely awesome in all aspects.

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Post-Rock Classic

Muse8

This is an instrumental post-rock classic. The music ranges from gentle melody to rock assault. Highly recommended.

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Amazing!!!

VilliSvan

I remember buying this album 1997 and itīs propably on my top 10 best ever albums. I really recommend this for every post-rock fan. An album that has shimmering instrumental sounds and takes you to different places. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! my favorite song is Tracy...The only song ever to make me weep!!

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They Say All Media Guide

Young Team, Mogwai’s first full-length album fulfills the promise of their early singles and EPs, offering an complex, intertwining set of crawling instrumentals, shimmering soundscapes and shards of noise. Picking up where Ten Rapid left off, Mogwai uses the sheer length of an album to their advantage, recording a series of songs that meld together — it’s easy to forget where one song begins and the other ends. The record itself takes its time to begin, as the sound of chiming processed guitars and murmured sampled vocals floats to the surface. Throughout the album, the sound of the band keeps shifting, and it’s not just through explosions of noise — Mogwai isn’t merely jamming, they have a planned vision, subtly texturing their music with small, telling details. When the epic “Mogwai Fears Satan” draws the album to a close, it becomes clear that the band has expanded the horizons of post-rock, creating a record of sonic invention and emotional force that sounds unlike anything their guitar-based contemporaries have created. [Young Team was reissued in 2008 with a second disc of bonus material including unreleased tracks, compilation appearances and live recordings.] – Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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