- Mogwai are no strangers to composing soundtracks. With Zerozerozero, created for an Italian crime drama, they're up to their fifth outright soundtrack, plus a few more where they've collaborated with other artists. They've proven themselves extremely adept at this sort of work, with virtually all of these records working both as accompaniment and stand-alone. That's not to say that these records always succeed in the same way as the band's 'proper' albums do – there are certain qualities that soundtracks require that normal albums don't that just make them different, if not necessarily better or worse. For example, despite being largely vocal-free, Mogwai's music can seldom be called 'background music' – try having a nap to one and you'll often be rudely awakened by a guitar explosion like a Like Herod or We're No Here. Soundtracks, on the other hand, tend to have to blend a little bit more into the background, and the songs within generally have to set a fairly specific mood and then move on relatively quickly. There's not often room for ten-minute epics.
Zerozerozero perhaps both suffers and benefits from these restrictions more than any previous Mogwai soundtrack. For one thing, every song here is exceedingly brief by Mogwai standards, with no song reaching the five-minute mark, and the shortest being barely more than a single minute long. This brevity works for and against the songs. In their favour is that nothing has a chance to outstay its welcome, and there's certainly something to be said for leaving the listener wanting more. Mogwai have proved in the past that they can make very effective music without resorting to extended song lengths – see 2006's Mr Beast. On the other hand, none of the songs get much of a chance to be truly great or do much that's unexpected – most of them really just work around one musical idea and Mogwai's usual bag of sonic tools: lots of clean guitars, twinkly keys and various synthesizers, some highly reverbed and at times distorted washes of guitar every now and then. Everything tends to fall into one of two moods: dark and threatening, or laid-back and pretty, and after a while the songs do kind of blend into one another (not helped by the expansive seventy-minute album length). The opening trio of songs pretty much define the territory covered by the rest of the record and you could put this album on shuffle and it really wouldn't make much of a difference, which is not something that you can generally say about Mogwai albums proper. Most of the best numbers are the ones that get the chance to at least stretch out a bit and perhaps have at least one significant dynamic or emotional shift, such as the tracks Moon In Reverse, Lesser Glasgow and Rivers Wanted.
With all of that said, most of the issues I've listed are really only problems on an intellectual level. In practice, Zerozerozero is a very satisfying listen, provided you're into what Mogwai does, that being slow, deliberate, textured and emotive instrumental music. It's perhaps a little bit more 'background-y' than other Mogwai records, but pretty much everything here works. I guess that's the other benefit of writing for a soundtrack, in that by its very nature it defines a set aesthetic and mood for a collection of songs. Mogwai may well fear Satan, but they don't seem to fear the few restrictions that soundtrack work places on their music.
- Cameron Smith.