Ear plugs played an important role, as did the warm jackets worn by many members of the audience — as if they were in Glasgow, Mogwai’s home town, in autumn. It couldn’t have been any better for a rock gig.

News had circulated around two months ago that Mogwai were going to visit Bandung as part of their Asian tour. Tickets sold out at the last minute, leaving many people disappointed who were unable to watch their gig.

Polyester Embassy was supposed to play the opening act, but a few days before the night the promoter announced that L’alphalpha would play as a substitute — and they did a very good job at warming up the crowd.

The opening act started at 8 p.m. and ran for around 45 minutes, presenting some good tunes from their debut album When We Awake, All Dreams Are Gone. The end of their performance was met with long applauses from the crowd, a sign of the audience’s satisfaction.

Within the blink of an eye, Mogwai’s road crew had set up the stage. Stuart Braithwaite’s black and white Fender Telecaster with a small Scottish flag on it took its place on the right flank.

The strumming began around 30 minutes later, and fans went berserk and start chanting the band’s name. Each tune the instruments strummed was welcomed with cheers from the audience, and the band hadn’t even appeared yet. At around 9 p.m., all five members of the band took the stage. They waved their hands and got ready to dole out the main dish for that night — rock music with a Mogwai flavour.

They opened the set with fans’ new favorite, “White Noise”, from their latest album, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. This was met with euphoria, of course.

While they don’t include many vocal elements in their music, Mogwai tunes have always been able to steal people’s hearts with their seletion of melodies, taking listeners on brilliant musical journeys. As with other post-rockers in the hood, ambience comes first. This is also reflected in the band’s inability to speak to their audience between songs. In Mogwai’s case, they kept this to a minimum.

“Hello, Bandung. We’re Mogwai from Glasgow, Scotland. It’s good to be here,” said Braithwaite after playing “White Noise”.

Braithwaite was the only band member to greet the audience. The others — Martin Bulloch on drums, Barry Burns on keyboards and guitar, Dominic Aithison on bass and John Cummings on guitar —didn’t speak with their mouths, but through their music. Braithwaite also said “thank you”, which he repeated again after every song, and praised L’alphalpha’s opening act.

“Thanks for coming and watching our show. And thanks to L’alphalpha for playing,” he said to the cheering crowd.

Soon after, they performed a few more tunes including “Rano Pano”, “Mexican GP” and “How to be a Werewolf”. A selection from previous releases also served in tunes such as “I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead”, “We’re No Here”, “Mogwai Fear Satan” and others.

The best part of the concert was the marriage between the distortion from the instruments on stage and the stage lighting design. The music succeeded in getting the audience swaying their heads. Some were even seen head banging. Mogwai knew that to prevent boredom during their set, good lightning design was crucial. And what they displayed in Bandung was truly representative. Their lighting engineer played an important role as if he were a sixth member of the band.

The most notable moment was when they finished their set after playing “We’re No Here”. The band left the stage with each of their instruments alive and in pole position, and within three seconds John Cummings, the technician, gave a signal to turn of all the stage lights. This left everyone in the audience amazed.

“This is the last night of our Asian Tour. It’s great to finish it here,” said Stuart Braithwaite prior to the encore.

With the crowd chanting, “We want more!” nonstop, the band rewarded them with three more songs. This reached a peak in the last song, “Batcat”. Everyone was happy.

“This is really the last song. Thank you for listening to our music throughout these years. We really appreciate it. Cheers,” Braithwaite said before leaving the stage. It was a fair closing for one of the best concerts Indonesia has seen this year.

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