Mogwai Play Atomic
Atomic, the new album by Scottish experimental rock legends Mogwai, comprises reworked versions of the music recorded for the soundtrack to director Mark Cousins’s acclaimed documentary Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise, which first aired on the BBC last summer.
Constructed with archival film footage, Atomic is an impressionistic kaleidoscope of the horrors of our nuclear times—protest marches, Cold War sabre-rattling, Chernobyl, and Fukushima—but also the sublime beauty of the atomic world, and how X-rays and MRI scans have improved human lives. Mogwai's soundtrack encapsulates the nightmare of the nuclear age, but its dreamlike qualities, too. It is the latest in the band's series of impressive soundtracks and scores, following acclaimed albums Les Revenants (The Returned) and Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.