fakejazz sat down with Barry Burns on September 10, 2003, before Mogwai’s show at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina.

fakejazz: How’s the tour been going? Any shows really stand out so far?

Barry Burns: Montreal, definitely. That show was fantastic. I hoped that we had found a rhythm and take that magical connection to every show from there on. We’ll probably let everyone down instead.

Computers have increasingly become more apparent on your albums. Word has it that you and John have been introducing some of your older tracks during live performances using the computers that are now part of the band’s live set-up. Is this indicative of a possible new creative direction for the band or an illustration of things that are to come?

Less of a new approach and more the result of several opportunities that we were presented with. We got some endorsements that have enabled us to do some things that we could never afford to do otherwise, like one from Steinway. When the equipment is sitting around, it’s hard not to play with it and see what it can do and test it all out. I wouldn’t mind more opportunities either. Heh…

Fast forward to late November 2003. You guys are all off the road for a little while and have a chance to kick back and breathe. What helps the members of Mogwai pass the time when they’re around Glasgow?

Well (laughs), I don’t do much—I’m really boring. Well, I go and see some gigs, which is pretty perverse I think as it is probably the last place I should be. But I go and see some bands. It’s usually good around Christmastime in Glasgow for bands. I really just sit around a lot. Actually, I have some land that I bought with my girlfriend and we have to fix it and sort it out before the winter and the ground gets hard. Oh wait—it’s November by the time we really get back? It will be solid and frozen. Next year, eh? Otherwise, I never really make plans for things, I just do whatever pops up at the time. It might make me sound slightly more interesting, but it’s not—it just shows how inactive and boring I am.

Is music a part of the regular routine or is it something that’s done when need be only?

Well, with us having our own label (Rock Action Records) these days we’re kept even busier. When we’re not doing Mogwai, we’re doing Rock Action so there’s not really any time off from music in general. I wish I had more time to do things since I started a band with another friend back home a few years ago and we just haven’t managed to do anything since he always has stuff to do with his band and I’m always off doing shows. It’s really difficult to do extracurricular activities I suppose.

It’s no secret that the band as a whole is not a fan of the US/UK involvement in Iraq, a sentiment that even led to couple of shirts with choice words for both George Bush and Tony Blair. These feelings have also spilled over into occasional comments regarding the current climate of international politics and reactions. Has Mogwai ever been tempted to become more political with your music? Be it song titles, lyrics, etc?

Those shirts were funny. Beyond that, there’s nothing. We like to vent our anger on the web page, which is probably rather pious of us, but it is something to write down. It is what we think. We don’t really have much else planned. We’re just as political as any other group of friends and we have lots of discussion about stuff but don’t want this to have anything to do with the music. I think it’s been done so badly by other bands in the past like Manic Street Preachers. They aren’t even that big here, are they? I think you really need a certain spark to write political lyrics that mean anything or have any power. Otherwise, you really end up looking pretty foolish. That’s something we’d rather shy away from.

Come January the band will be getting close to eight years old and it seems that you guys are just starting to hit a wonderfully creative stride. That said, what does the future hold for Mogwai as a unit? Is the future bright, perhaps even further lightened by the fact that Stuart, John and Barry have been working outside of the band? In other words, what should be expected and what’s on the horizon?

We just want to make another record really quickly, or at least that’s the attitude now. We’re getting bored, quite frankly and we want some new songs to play. Personally, I think we’ll be writing for a while after this. There’s not really any end in the immediate future. There are a few things coming up that we already want to work on. The Kronos Quartet from San Francisco want us to write some music for them. There’s also a London filmmaker called Steve McQueen, not the actor, who has put together a twenty-five minute film. There was a guy, I think it was his cousin, who shot his little brother by accident and killed him. The film is the story of the day it all happened and it’s just a big picture of the back of his head. He wants us to write twenty-five minutes of music for it which should be completely unentertaining, maybe just downright painful. We’re looking forward to that. (Laughs) Any excuse to make that sort of noise and maybe take the Merzbow approach.

That actually ties in with something I was going to ask you later a little later. Your music seems to have started popping up more and more places lately, from commercials to incidental music on TV shows. Does the band have loftier ambitions with placing their music within the graphic arts, such as any desire to ever contribute a score to a film? Are there any particular film directors that you would particularly want to work for?

Sex and the City—that’s a strange one, I know. We would like to do more with the graphic arts but in the end it’s always the other people that end up asking us to do it before we get motivated. We’re bad that way. It’s definitely good when people approach us as they really have an idea of what they would like for us to do and we just say yes like the sheep we are. We would definitely like to do more film music. I did some work in the past year with David Byrne and a lot of other musicians from Glasgow and it was a great experience. Since I have been trained in classical piano I’m pretty sure I could write the music myself and then turn it over to the rest of the band. The new Batman film that Christopher Nolan is shooting is one we all would love to do. They’re not giving us the music, sadly, but it would have been nice.

Is there anyone in particular that you’d like to work with?

Not really. Actually, Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) is someone I would love to work with. That would be fantastic. You don’t know him, do you? If you do, definitely pass the word along.

OK, a different type of question. Who do you feel is the most under-appreciated artist in music over the past 20 years and why?

Oh, I got a similar question the other day and couldn’t come up with a good answer then. Hmmm, maybe Nick Drake? Well, people are listening to him more now and he’s really not from the last twenty years. I’m sure those Volkswagen commercials have him rolling in his grave and vomiting. I bet I’ll have a great answer to this tomorrow.

Happy Songs seems to thematically follow along some of the same paths that Rock Action took while directly expanding on them in a number of cases. For example, whereas the previous album saw the band start to venture into more shorter songs that didn’t take quite as long to get to where they are going as compared to past efforts. Happy Songs seems to have directly picked up on this trend and is predominated by tracks that are, in large part, shorter than Mogwai songs of the past (whereas in the past, longer songs were the norm with shorter punctuating the rest, now it’s vice versa). Is the new album representative of a new look regarding song creation or is it the product of a change in execution?

I think the length of the songs on the new record is somewhat of how they just panned out. Several of the songs were much longer early on and just got shortened when we realized that they didn’t really need to be lengthy. They seemed much more complete as they became shorter. It really was just something that happened, although we did have half a mind going into the studio to make the tracks shorter. Will that be the same for the next record? I don’t know. We really can’t plan too much as to our records—we see how they happen when we sit down with the tracks. We have had a change in our attitude towards songwriting—now we want to try to do something different when we have the chance, but these days we seem to do it somewhat subconsciously. It’s kind of weird.

Has this new view towards creation led to any new songs over the course of the tour?

No, we’ve never done that actually. It’s just too awkward in my mind to try to do around the schedule of daily touring. Your day is more or less planned out for you and any spare time that pops up I think is best used relaxing. I definitely don’t find making music up relaxing, either. I find it to be something that really makes me awake and fully focused. We’re probably lazy not to write songs while we’re all a captive audience, but we’re lazy bastards.

You’ve mentioned a few projects that you’ve got on your horizon such as the noise-laden film score and some work for the Kronos Quartet. Is there any movement on some of your past pending projects that you have either discussed elsewhere or have otherwise been rumored? I know there was once talk that you were going to do a version of “My Father, My King” with Arthur Baker. Is that still going on?

Well, we recorded the first two movements of the song with him and we really felt that it wasn’t working out quite right. He is a good producer but I don’t think the situation was suited for us. The version we ended up doing with Steve Albini was one we were happy with and that was the end of that entire project.

What about the old joking mention of a Guns ‘n’ Roses cover EP? Any seriousness behind that? What about the EP that had been tossed around of Scottish folk songs?

The Guns ‘n’ Roses had nothing to do with me—you’d have to talk to Stuart about that one. It would be odd. The Scottish folk songs disc was a good idea that came to us at a time when we really didn’t have enough money to do it. We’ve got the money now and I would like to do it, but I’m scared that it would seem quite pretentious. That is one we’ll have to sort out.

Was there much truth to Chino Morero from the Deftones wanting to lay down vocals for a Mogwai track?

It was true, but it never really happened. I don’t think it would now. We ended up asking him to do one song, and we also asked Chan Marshall. Neither of them said yes. I think Morero wanted to do it but his schedule was packed and when he had the time to do it we were too busy. I’m not sure if it’s something that would really happen now. The interview ended when an extremely large wasp-like creature descended to the ground immediately behind us and made us both fear for our lives. Looking back at the moment, it was really the only proper ending to our conversation.