“We’re the Mogwai band from Glasgow,” smiles Stuart [guitars] before tearing into their first song, very slowly and very quietly. I left Birmingham’s Foundry with my ears ringing and my retinas seared, but it’s worth remembering that the strobe-drenched (this Mogwai doesn’t seem to mind bright light) feedback-fest is only half the story with Mogwai. I look back at the gig as starting with a bang, but it was a very slow and very quiet bang.

“Our music,” explains Stuart a few hours previously, “is really organic, quite emotional, and if you were giving a bare description to someone who’s deaf, then you’re saying that it basically changes volume quite dramatically. And that’s it”. It’s a simple definition, but then Mogwai are a fairly simple band; unpretentious and unassuming, all they really want to do here in Birmingham is buy records (Soft Cell and PIL, if you must know) and see Primal Scream, who are playing at the same time as them on the other side of town.

In a world where musical references are worn like badges, proclaiming loyalty to one legendary songwriter or another, it’s refreshing to hear a band who use their influences rather than just copy them. “I think part of the reason for that,” explains Dominic [guitar/bass], “especially to begin with, is because musically, apart from Stuart, none of us were basically talented enough to make ourselves sound like them”.

“Also, we were appalled at some of the tunes that were kicking around at the time,” continues Stuart. “Blur were about the biggest band around at the time when we started, in the height of the mediocrity. We used to get really upset. I remember one time we played in Leicester, we were loading the gear into the van and there was this Geneva poster, and every time we passed it we did a massive greener on it, so by the time the gear was loaded you couldn’t even read that it was a Geneva poster. It wasn’t conscious, we didn’t say ‘we’re going to smash Kinks-obsessed retro’, we just didn’t like it and we didn’t want to be like that because we think it’s rubbish”.

However, if ‘97s end of year polls are to be believed, the only contemporaries Mogwai really have are Radiohead, whose ‘OK Computer’ was put alongside ‘Young Team’ as the two best albums of last year.

“We took that with a big pinch of salt, because we weren’t as proud of it as we would like to be,” admits Stuart.

“I think some of the songs are rubbish,” confesses Dominic.

“But to be honest, if we’d kept at it to the point where it was going to be as good as ‘Forever Changes’, or whatever, then we’d still be at it right now and we wouldn’t even have written the songs that we’ve written since then. It’s just good to move on, even though I think it could’ve been much better. We’ve written three new songs since then, and they still sound like the same band, but they don’t sound like they’d fit on the album”.

The album received almost as much attention for its bizarre track titles as it did for the songs they named. Titles like ‘A Cheery Wave From Stranded Youngsters’, ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’ and ‘Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home’.

Explains Dominic, “It’s totally random, really. Looking through a book or something, or just reading a magazine and seeing something that sounds cool I think David [Pajo, of Aerial M] probably does it the same way to us. There’s a song on his album called ‘New Sparse’, which is a bit like our ‘New Quiet’. That’s how we used to refer to songs; ‘the new one’ or ‘the quiet one’. We had one we called ‘Slint’ because we thought it sounded like Slint, and another called ‘Joy Division’ because we thought it sounded a bit like Joy Division. You only properly name them at the very last minute, when they have to print the covers”. It’s Dominic who fears Satan, apparently, as a result of a Catholic upbringing (although drummer Martin is more scared of Jesus), and they were in Brighton when they were a long way from home (although it was an American friend who actually said it).

One of the more interesting developments in Mogwai’s career as remixers on David Holmes’ ‘Don’t Die Just Yet’. Stuart explains, “We just got asked to do it, we got paid more money for that than we’ve ever got paid for anything before. It was a fuck-about. We could’ve done a better job, but it gave us a chance to get used to working with samplers”. It seems interesting that nowadays it’s possible for a guitar band to be asked to remix a dance act...

“I don’t think it’s really that important,” counters Stuart, “I think it has more to do with the fact that Go! Beat want to sign Arab Strap, although it’s happening a wee bit more. We’re going to do a remix of Therapy? and we’re doing mu-ziq as well. We said we’d do him a swopsie”.

It’ll be interesting to see what Mike Paradinas can do with Mogwai’s music, and this departure might just be enough to pull them away from the press fad of championing anyone with a quaint colonial accent who picks up a guitar. “You mean the whole Arab Strap thing? We didn’t mind to begin with, but it’s starting to grate a bit now,” says Stuart.

“I suppose we can’t really avoid it, because we do have a lot of similarities with Arab Strap,” Dominic continues. “We know them really well and we’ve played with them a few times, but it’s getting to the stage, especially in Scotland, where the press are starting to take the piss and we’re getting a bit sick of it. It could be worse, we could be lumped in with someone really shite...”

“...like Ultrasound and Idlewild, or something”.

“I just realise I made that sound like we really hate Arab Strap. We don’t, we really like them”.

Of course, the main difference between the two acts would seem to be Arab Strap’s heart-on-sleeve, brutally frank soul-baring as opposed to Mogwai’s intense instrumental emotional outpouring, although Stuart disagrees. “I don’t think that very many people outside of Scotland know what the fuck Aidan [Moffatt, Arab Strap vocalist] is talking about. You can’t really tell what he’s saying, but you hear the tone of his voice and you have to imagine it. It’s a bit like a painting - you can take what you want from a painting, but you pretty well know what you’re getting from a book. Which isn’t to say there’s not been a lot of good books”.

Mogwai were talking to Tim, in January 1998.