South Facing Festival

@ Crystal Palace

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Mogwai’s Bass-Driven Takeover of Crystal Palace

We wouldn’t exactly say that thinking of Crystal Palace is synonymous with notions of music festivals, but South Facing proved us wrong. Four years on, it still slips under most radars; an open-air horseshoe bowl at Crystal Palace Park, vendors and craft drinks hugging the rim, and a crowd of Adidas-track-jacketed gorp-core devotees, not glitter-tossing tossers. The kind of gathering where you keep your pint to yourself, not lob it over strangers’ heads. No laddish chaos, no jostling elbows; just an attentive, almost reverent audience. And with good reason; just a crowd quietly reverent for what was about to unfold.

South Facing has built a quiet reputation since 2021 for booking headliners that span grime, nostalgic britpop, ambient composers, and post-rock giants with genuine stature like Dizzee Rascal, Supergrass, and Max Richter; proof that it can swing between the nostalgic, the cerebral, and the mercurial without breaking a sweat. This year, the hook was irresistible: Scotland’s favourite sonic titans, Mogwai, rolling in for a night of dual widescreen catharsis. Their support lineup was no afterthought either. Ireland’s Lankum brought immersive, experimental folk; Scottish post-punk outfit The Twilight Sad added emotional heft; Caroline delivered choral emo-folk textures; and Glaswegian indie-heroes The Yummy Fur stirred nostalgia into the mix.

By dusk, the crowd had hushed. First came Lankum, their acoustic instruments and vocal harmonies swelling into something vast. The Twilight Sad delivered raw emotional altitude; Caroline’s choral weave and the Yummy Fur's sharp indie cuts kept ears alert. But let’s be real; everyone was awaiting the main event.

When Mogwai finally emerged, there was no slathered-on glitz, just a nod and then ‘God Gets You Back’. That bass. It wasn’t overwhelming; it was monumental. Vision blurred, fingers tingled. Mogwai’s low end wrapped around you, the sound was immense but never sloppy; every note folded in like careful ingredients to a cake batter, nothing drowning, everything binding. 

‘Hi Chaos’ stretched the air, tones drifting and colliding. ‘How to Be a Werewolf’ shimmered with tremolo guitars, each strum precision forged. ‘Cody’ offered a rare lyrical murmur; a whisper in the post-rock storm. ‘Drive the Nail’ pummeled, heavy and deliberate, while ‘2 Rights Make 1 Wrong’ felt like a sprawling, ink-smudged love letter to sound itself.

Then ‘Auto Rock’ brought a palate cleanser; a shimmering ELO-ish keyboard flourish cutting through the night. From there, the set darkened into ‘Remurdered’, its pulses Carpenter-ian and tense. ‘Fanzine Made of Flesh’ followed, every texture layered and intentional, reward for granular listening.

As sonic titans do, Mogwai delivered ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’ with volcanic crescendo; an emotional apex. ‘Lion Rumpus’ crackled with energy. ‘Ritchie Sacramento’ calmed the storm with introspective grief, and closer ‘We’re No Here’ detonated in finality; closing not with frills, but with raw intensity.

Mogwai’s sound is cinematic, disciplined, and largely lyricless by design; every burst of noise, every echo, carries weight. Their music has always been methodical, each note given its full measure before the next lands. And that bass? It’s not just heard. It’s felt. The earth trembles, your ribs resonate. The bowl itself seemed to hum with it as the final chords faded.

As the crowd filtered out; ears ringing, voices hushed, the lights dimmed, and the night exhaled. Mogwai didn’t just fill the stage; they remapped the place through sound. South Facing, with its pristine layout and thoughtful booking, gave them the space; and the sonic canvas, they deserved.

The music strand of the International Festival continues at the Leith Theatre with a blast of post-rock from Mogwai with support from Rev Magnetic.

Rev Magnetic are a project of Mogwai collaborator, Luke Sutherland. They have a similar use of dynamics to Mogwai in their songs often beginning quietly and building to a wall of distorted sound. The vocals are sometimes quiet and clear and sometimes processed to produce a robotic sound. The performance is notable for these contrasts of loud and soft, clear and distorted, simple and processed. A notable stage presence is Audrey Bizouerne who brings energy to the stage with a clear high vocal and a gusto to her bass playing that makes it seem like a lead guitar at times. The vocal arrangements are quite complex but when they work they produce an almost grand, choral sound. There is probably a lot of development to come from this band as they clarify that sound but it will be one worth following.

Mogwai follow and are greeted with great enthusiasm by the Leith crowd. Their stage set uses long coloured light boxes either side of a central gap which can sometimes appear like an abyss and sometimes like the gaps in parting clouds letting in the light. This abstract light show accentuates the moods of their music but never becomes too proscriptive in its interpretation.

The opening is the soft chiming of ‘Heard About You Last Night’ which acts like a call for the attention of the audience and then develops into a blissful dream of the previous night’s action with the occasional black regret of episodes best, but not, forgotten. The set continues with a mix of tunes but the early part is heavily from their most recent (non-soundtrack) album ‘Every Country’s Sun’ which they are just finishing touring. ‘Party In The Dark’ is an up-tempo celebration where the use of echo creates reverberations like the voices of a thousand strong choir. Other numbers have an even more ethereal effect with ‘Don’t Believe The Fife’ feeling at times like a grand deep ocean exploration submerged under a kilometre of water with the muffled, echoing of notes bouncing off caves and rift walls on the sea-floor.

A Mogwai gig is an opportunity to be enveloped in their sound starting quietly but often building to huge, trouser-flapping volumes. Theirs is music to stimulate the imagination. It’s like being a 12-year-old kid who has the gates of Jurassic Park opened for them and told to go play with the animals. Mogwai often have limited edition prints available at their concerts and, for this one, the picture of Godzilla breathing down fire on Edinburgh Castle seemed a perfect starting point for many of the imaginings that this gig brings to mind. The sound is often majestic but somehow never takes itself too seriously.

‘Coolverine’ follows with a stately intent and then there is the attacking discord of ‘Old Poisons’. The closing numbers are some favourites from earlier albums. Their version of ‘Remurdered’ is the epitome of the wandering slow-build of volume in Mogwai’s music to a climax in a grand layering of musical textures. The numbers build to a prog-rock length with the final encore of ‘My Father My King’ which could have scored the Mongol Horde thundering in their tens of thousands across the Steppe. A gig that in more than one way was a blast.