Stopping by before their only Australian show at Dark Mofo, Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite and Dominic Aitchison chat album number nine, teen influences and working with Trent Reznor on Leonardo DiCaprio’s doco.

Having just announced their ninth studio album ‘Every Country’s Sun’, due in September this year, the Scottish post-rockers let Alex Pye in on what it was like to premiere the new album in full live at Barcelona’s Primavera Festival.

“It was fun but quite nerve-racking. We’d rehearsed for two weeks beforehand but playing new songs live – it takes a while to sort of relax into them and we were a wee bit apprehensive, but it went okay.”

With a long musical history that spans two decades of Mogwai, the two looked back on the early days, shedding some light on the huge role UK journalist John Peel (BBC Radio 1’s The Peel Sessions) played in their success.

“His radio show and radio sessions were a big thing for us when we were young teenagers first getting into music. Even before we started the band he was a formative influence and when we started the band, we made our first record, he played it and got us in for a session. It was a really big deal and we were lucky to do a bunch for him.”

In addition to working with heavyweights in the music industry, the post-rock outfit also worked with actor/environmental activist and all-round dreamboat Leonardo DiCaprio on his National Geographic documentary ‘Before The Flood’.

“That was really awesome. It was actually Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that asked us to be involved. We sent them a bunch of music and they ended up playing one of our songs and we played one of theirs on it too. I’m a big Nine Inch Nails fan but especially when I was a teenager I was a massive fan, so that was pretty incredible.”

Listen back to the full interview above.