ZIDANE - A 21ST CENTURY PORTRAIT (OST)

"Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait" is a soundtrack album by Scottish post-rock act Mogwai. The album was released through Wall of Sound/Play It Again Sam in October 2006. It bridges the gap between the release of the band´s 5th and 6th full-length studio albums "Mr Beast" (2006) and "The Hawk Is Howling" (2008). The material featured on the album was put together within a short timespan on request by film maker Douglas Gordon for his documentary film about French football legend Zinedine Zidane titled "Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle". The album mostly consists of new tracks but a few re-arranged and re-recorded songs from previous releases by Mogwai have also found their way unto the album.

Stylistically the music on "Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait" don´t feel like a natural succession of the simpler more rock oriented sound and style of "Mr. Beast" (2006). It sounds more like an album released after "Come on Die Young" (1999). The music is generally more mellow, repetitive, atmospheric and with a more improvised feel than what we´ve gotten used to with the three preceeding albums "Rock Action" (2001), "Happy Songs for Happy People" (2003) and "Mr. Beast" (2006). Pleasant guitar driven post-rock with added piano and organ which is great for the variation is still the style on this album though (so the basis of the music is still unmistakably the sound of Mogwai). There are 10 regular tracks on the album but after the last track "Black Spider 2" ends there are a few minutes of silence before a 20 minute ambient drone starts. An unneccesary hidden track if you ask me but who knows? Some listeners may be able to appreciate it.

At this point in their career Mogwai were a well oiled engine and everything is delivered with great conviction and skill. "Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait" also features a well sounding production job, and while some tracks come off a little loosely structured and probably could have benefitted from a bit more composition time, it´s still overall a good quality release from Mogwai. A 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is warranted.