So how does Aitchison feel about the Gorillaz, the side project of Blur’s lead singer Damon Albarn? “We’re not very partial to that either,” Aitchison laughingly admits, “You see, I just wouldn’t mind it but Damon always talks total shite about what he does before hand, which ends up pissing us off more than anything else. The music isn’t very good, but he was talking about how it was great, real original and ground breaking. He kept going on about it being a cartoon band and how every band in ten years will be like that, so bands won’t need to play live. That’s the point to being in a band, to play live. He’s such an idiot.”

Aitchison doesn’t really feel all that bad about publicly criticizing Albarn. “He found out we didn’t like the Gorillaz when we were slagging him off again quite recently. And somebody told us he is starting to get pretty pissed off. I wouldn’t be pissed off, because he’s a millionaire, he’s made all the money he’s ever going to need. Who cares if some crappy wee band starts slagging you.”

Some might argue, ‘where do Mogwai get off calling Blur shite, what has Mogwai really done?’ Mogwai are a band that takes time and patience to get into. Most of their songs are long, slow and instrumental. You have to be in a certain mood to truly appreciate the Scottish band. Aitchison admits that Mogwai’s sound isn’t for everyone. “I mean, if people find it boring that’s fare enough, I know it’s not the most exciting kind of music in the world, but I don’t know. I think it depends on your attention span. If you can sit there and listen to it. A lot people expect different things from music, a lot people like music to just jump about to or to listen to in the car or to work to, they don’t take it all that seriously. Some people like traditional songs with choruses and stuff.”

Traditional, Mogwai’s songs are not. Their latest release, Rock Action (Matador), was billed as a change of pace for the band. It may be their most accessible album to date, being about half as short as their first two albums, but Aitchison admits they haven’t really altered their sound all that much. “It’s more of the same. Except that there’re some strings on it, which I don’t see as being all that different. I mean there is the obvious difference, like having strings and singing. But we’re still writing songs the same way, we’re not really doing anything particularly differently from the way we were doing it when we first started.”

The vocals on Dial: Revenge come courtesy of Gruff Rhys, the lead singer of Welsh experimental indie popsters The Super Furry Animals. Most of the SFA’s songs are in English, but they also have the dubious
title of the having the biggest selling all Welsh language album ever, with 1999’s strangely beautiful Mwng. Mogwai of course had Rhys sing in Welsh, a language few people understand. Dial actually means revenge in Welsh. “We had this song on the album that none of us wanted to sing on, or could sing on really. We knew it would probably go beyond our singing capabilities, so we decided to ask Gruff because we do like his voice.” Dial: Revenge ends up being the standout track on the album.

Rock Action as a whole was produced by Mercury Rev band member and producer Dave Friedman, who was recommended by fellow Scots The Delgados after he produced their near stunning The Great Eastern. Aitchison has nothing but praise to lay on Friedman. “He was just brilliant, a really easy guy to work with, really really nice. He knows us inside out; he had us clocked right away. He knew all about what we’d like, what we wouldn’t like.”

Aitchison’s words about the British Monarchy are not so nice. Mogwai’s lead singer, Stuart Braithwaite, has been somewhat out spoken in the UK media about his dislike of the Queen and her family. Aitchison readily agrees with the anti-royal sentiment. “I think it’s embarrassing because people still think of Britain as an Empire. Only people in Britain still think of Britain as an Empire, it’s the last symbol of this. Britain’s a fucking shit hole; it’s no more special than anywhere else so we don’t need a king and queen. Her kids have gone out been absolute arseholes on several occasions, doing something really embarrassing. Every time they’re in the new now, it’s never because they’ve done something good. It’s always about one of them taking drugs or having a phone conversation with their lover or stuff like that. They paid a lot of money for fuck all, they do nothing.”

So he thinks Britain is a “fucking shit hole,” well listen to his idea of hell to put a finger on what he thinks about America. Aitchison says his idea of hell is to be “touring across America in a small transit van filled with people that I absolutely fucking hate. Being made to listen to every single CD in the world that I can’t stand. Especially driving through uh...” At which point Aitchison calls out to a roadie on the tour bus with us, “Mick, what’s the place when you drive from Chicago to Seattle, what state, where was it we were driving through that was so desolate?”

Mick replies: “Minnesota.”
“Minnesota.” Aitchison continues, “Having to drive through Minnesota the rest of your life nonstop, needing to go to the toilet.” The night before I sat down with Aitchison in his tour bus, the band played San Francisco. Mogwai have a reputation for being incredibly loud live and Aitchison brags, “We were shaking chunks off the Philmore wall last night, it gave us a kind of childish grin.”

Aitchison isn’t all grins, however, when asked how he feels about the term post-rock. Mogwai has been lumped into this supposed genre of music by unimaginative music critics. “It’s kind of a stupid term, it doesn’t really make much sense. I don’t know, it seems really pretentious to me. A lot of the bands are described as being post rock. You get bands like Tortoise, we’re nothing like Tortoise, we’re completely different. So it’s a pretty vague term. It’s a pretty lazy term, lazy on the media’s front. They don’t really know what sort of music it is. If it’s not straight-ahead rock n’ roll, then it’s post rock. It’s a bit miserable, so we’ll call it post rock. It’s stupid. Like Stuart always says, post rock is when you get drunk and chase girls.”

Aitchison and co. aren’t really that bothered about it though, they are just happy to be written about in the first place. The band never imagined that they’d get the acclaim they’ve received and that they’d sell the amount of records that they have. “We really can’t believe how well we’ve done, it’s pretty remarkable,” Aitchison finally admits “To actually be making a living out of it too, is a dream come true. We still thought we’d be playing shity clubs in Glasgow to two people, playing to our girlfriends and that’s about it.”

And are Blur still shite? “Aye.” Just checking.