bl: how did mogwai's involvement come about?
sb: director douglas gordon asked if we were interested sometime towards the end of last year. when we said we were interested, he came to glasgow to show us some footage. in the footage they showed us they had used the surgeon mix of 'mogwai fear satan', so we knew that our music was suited to the film. the film looked great and the idea behind it was suitably abstract.
bl: and presumably it appealed to you as football fans?
sb: i suppose so but i don't think liking football has any bearing on whether you enjoy the film. actually a lot of football fans found it frustrating because you couldn't see what was happening in the game.
bl: had you seen the match, or any of the footage, before starting writing/recording?
sb: yes, we saw about 15 minutes when we agreed to do it, and were given dvds of how it was coming along running up to the recording.
bl: did the directors give you any specific requirements? mood, pace etc? if not, how did you know where to start?!
sb: we weren't given any direction, but we'd seen how well our old music fitted in, so we knew what kind of mood worked.
bl: 'glasgow megasnake' and the surgeon mix of 'mogwai fear satan' were used in the trailers, but don't appear in the movie.
sb: we only wanted new music to be used in the film.
bl: 'black spider' has been around for a while (an outtake from 'rock action'). do any of the other tracks have a history?
sb: the only other old song is '7:25', which was written around the time of 'c.o.d.y.' but abandoned for sounding like it would have fitted on 'mogwai young team'. 'black spider' (previously known as 'big e') was also shelved for sounding too much like the previous record. they're both good songs though and this seemed the ideal project to record them.
bl: there seems to be a more improvised feel to some of the tracks ('wake up..', 'it would have happened anyway' and the hidden track)? how did they come about?
sb: the improvisation came about partly because we didn't have a lot of time to structure the music, and also because it suited the music we had written.
bl: is this a method of working you enjoyed? will you use it again? would you consider a fully-improvised record?
sb: i doubt we'd do a totally improvised record but would definitely do it again.
bl: how would you compare the experience of recording this with the sessions for 'the fountain'?
sb: 'the fountain' was already written and mapped out scene by scene, so our input involved playing all the music that was on piano, guitars and drums. with 'zidane' we had totally free reign.
bl: have you had any reaction from zidane himself? do you know if he'd heard mogwai before the movie?
sb: i've been told that he likes the music in the film, but we don't think that he knew who we were before the film.
bl: last one, from cheggers on the forum - "i've long wondered about mogwai's album release schedule. it seems that the release of each new album (myt, come on..., ra, hsfhp, mr b) seems to alternate with a compilation or other special album (10 rapid, dead pig, ep+6, gvt comms...). i'm just wondering if this is planned on the band's part, or a happy coincidence."
sb: i think that this is half coincidence and half the label thinking what can we put out to stop people forgetting who we are while we take donkeys to write and record.
