Mogwai have finished work on their fifth studio album, the follow up to 2003’s ‘Happy Songs For Happy People’. The record, titled ‘Mr Beast’, was recorded in the band’s new Castle of Doom studio in Glasgow over the summer with producer Tony Doogan and will be released on PIAS Recordings on the 6th March 2006.

As the title might suggest, a large part of ‘Mr Beast’ finds Mogwai returning to the bone-crushing volume and intensity of earlier recordings, but like all folk-lore’s greatest monster stories, this beast has a quieter, more sensitive side, as single ‘Friend Of The Night’ shows. In the words of manager Alan McGee the album “is probably the greatest art rock record that I’ve been involved in since My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. It’s possibly better than Loveless. It is the record that they have always threatened to make. It is a shockingly good record – fucking masterpiece.”