Mogwai - Simon Ferocious

What this video is

Released in May 2014 as a companion to Mogwai's eighth album Rave Tapes (January 2014, Rock Action Records), the Simon Ferocious video arrives at the apex of post-rock's critical assimilation into the indie mainstream. Mogwai, formed in Glasgow in 1995, had by this point built a two-decade career on mostly instrumental, dynamically extreme guitar music. The choice to pair the track with skydiving footage — shot at…

Why it matters

Exemplary of the post-rock music video tradition of pairing instrumental tracks with non-narrative, landscape or activity footage rather than performance or storyline — a format pioneered partly by Mogwai themselves and contemporaries like Explosions in the Sky. The video reinforces post-rock's…

The director

British-born, New York-based filmmaker and photographer represented by RSA Films. Started career in photography with work published in The Face, Dazed & Confused, British Vogue, i-D, and the New York Times. Transitioned into film with an unsolicited Mogwai…