Monday's Long Song,

This was the track that first brought Mogwai to my attention way back in early 1997.

One Friday afternoon  I'm sure it was,  I was busy doing the housework, at this time L lived and worked in Edinburgh during the week and came home at the weekends,. Not sure why I was off  but I was and  I was  either cleaning the kitchen or dusting, not hoovering or I would not have heard it,  when this tune came on the radio,  Radio 1 (I still listened to the station at the time) that stopped me in my tracks,  It started with the aural equivalent of something shimmering that kind of lulled me into a relaxed feeling of immense well being continued in this vein for about four minutes  then bang, fuzz over the top of the melody , however the noise did not grate and just felt like a natural progression building to a climax and just it the absolute perfect moment the noise dissipated, the shimmering returned and eventually petered out. Sheer bliss. There wasn't anything that sounded like this around at that time, well not that I had heard anyway. I waited for Jo Wylie to inform me of who it was but nothing, straight into some unremarkable indie pish which really annoyed me. No BBC Website to go on to check the playlist back then, so unless I caught this again somewhere else, there was a distinct possibility that this absolutely stunning piece of music would be lost to me.

An hour or so later Lynn came in and after the usual chit chat about the drive, the night before etc, she said "did you hear that track by somebody called Mogwai on Radio1 earlier?" So now I knew who it was by, a trip into Glasgow the following day was decided upon. In Fopp, I found out the name of the single but there were no copies there. After fruitless searches in a couple of more record shops, my last hope was upstairs at John Smith's bookstore and lo and behold there tucked in the singles was one copy of New Paths to Helicon which was duly purchased and flogged to death for weeks later and now resides in the red Swan singles box that would be lifted in case of emergencies.

I've posted the version from the Government Commissions compilation of Peel sessions as it lasts a further minute and a bit.

Mogwai - New Paths To Helicon Pt 1 (BBC Session)