If that fire that hit the Sony/PIAS warehouse in London during the recent UK riots seemed abstract to you, consider this: Mogwai's Earth Division EP was one of the releases stacked in the warehouse when the fire hit. The whole stock of it was lost, and because they had to re-press it, they couldn't offer it for pre-order on their website. Multiply that across thousands of releases, and you have a pretty good idea of the effect that fire had on the industry-- it gave a lot of people who were already struggling to make money off music a hell of a hard time.
All the more ironic, then, that Earth Division is among Mogwai's least fiery, least riotous recordings. The four songs, each averaging about four minutes long, mostly showcase the band's softest, most melancholy tendencies, tendencies that on the band's LPs are often set off by volume spikes, long crescendos, white noise, and the cumulative effects of repetition over long periods with subtle changes. Here, with one exception, they sound as though they're in soundtrack mode. The EP's bookend instrumentals especially have a cold and studied feel, mixing strings with piano and, on closer "Does This Always Happen?", a single repeated guitar phrase, to create static soundscapes. "Get to France" is gloomy and doomy, but feels almost like it would work best as an intro to something bigger.
The middle of the EP is given to the extremes of the band's sound. "Hound of Winter" is the only vocal track, and like many of the band's vocal tracks, it's instrumentally rich but melodically flat. Acoustic guitars and harmonicas don't seem to suit them quite as well as electric guitars. The real keeper is "Drunk and Crazy", which draws on Mogwai's experimental strengths to create a miniature that feels far more drawn-out and epic than it actually is. It begins in a morass of lunging static and cuts suddenly to a middle passage of gorgeously arranged strings. The intro isn't some kind of fake-out-- the static returns later to swallow everything-- but the dynamic shifts, from shuddering noise to traditional beauty and back again, give the song a strong, compelling form.
That kind of contrast, and mastery of it, has always been what defined Mogwai at their best, whether it was textural contrast or simple shifts in volume or rhythm. It's not present on the other three tracks here, though they are pleasant enough listening. At the risk of boxing the band in, though, "pleasant" has never been why I've come to Mogwai.
