Life with Mogwai has always been a strange whirl, but after 27 hours on a ferry to Norway with them, a karaoke, a skate video and a bar, everything goes completely ship-faced...

After 27 hours at sea, the mind has long since gotten bored with seeing things as they really are. It assumes a sort of random access mode, indiscriminately shuffling the previous day-and-a-bit's events until they appear to make no sense whatsoever. That is, if they ever did at all.

A man jumps off a motorway bridge and lands on the bonnet of a moving car with audible, sickening finality. Another hurtles from a shopping mall balcony and lands painfully in a tree some 2Oft below, then flees the scene, laughing. A car pulls up at a drive-through branch of Wendy's and the driver, announcing to the assistant that he is a Vietnarn veteran, orders a soda. On receipt of his drink, he screams, "Fire in the hold!" and hurls the sticky gloop back through the window at the salesperson, then speeds away. All the while, really, really bad heavy metal music is being piped from somewhere.

Four men are playing backyard American football. They have names like Thomas Shitt, Larry Potemkin and Kelly Goosecook. One of them kicks an incredible 75-yard field goal. But which?

Then the pictures get blurred. A group of people are sat in a large mock-velvet lounge, watching a Swedish band playing a cranky repertoire of Fleetwood Mac tunes and country & western standards. The spectators shout for Abba but are politely ignored by the female singer, who every three songs walks offstage for a cigarette.

In a neighbouring bar there's a karaoke session going on. A man strongly resembling the former drummer from The Wedding Present smokes cigars.

The karaoke finishes, replaced by a piano singer with a rum penchant for Lionel Ritchie and surrounded by an adoring coterie of pissed Scandindvians.

Young men skateboard down banisters.

Back in the backyard, the American football can be seen soaring in a perfect arc through twin uprights. But by the time it hits the turf it's become an empty tin of Irn Bru.

Suddenly, a small fellow wearing a Scotland football shirt leaps to his feet just as the band are crescendoing Elton John's 'Sacrifice' to conclusion and starts applauding. "Half-time!" he screams. "We're winning one-nil! C'mon mair beer!" Oh bugger, It's Stuart Braithwaite.

You can fly from the UK to Norway in two hours. The ferry from Newcastle to Bergen takes 27 hours. Mogwai always take the ferry. Stands to reason. You get a band on the ferry, and karaoke and a piano singer, and lots of beer. Very eventually, you get to arrive in Norway.

Mogwai love Norway. Quite apart from the fact that it looks like Scotland, only bigger and colder and with bars that stay open longer, it was the first country they ever travelled abroad to play. On that debut foreign trip John Cummings drank a whole bottle of vodka and offered to help the ship's captain steer the vessel. This time, in a gentle 'time's up' gesture, he throws a cloth at the piano singer, who promptly stops playing and walks off, much to the disgruntlement of his fans. Coincidentally or not, the bar closes.

Stuart Braithwaite and Dominic Aitchison have long since gone to bed. Barry Burns is under the table, laughing. John Cummings is last seen standing like a penitent schoolboy outside the persuer's office. Meanwhile, Martin Bulloch is convinced that as a result of John loosing his rag, Mogwai, their crew and NME will be royally hauled by Norwegian customs over on arrival in Bergen. "There's roaches in the bins on the bus," he explains, doomily. Five minutes earlier, Martin had been describing his ultimate fantasy; to buy a nice car, preferably a Ferrari, deck it out with furry dice and leopard skin seats, then paint it entirely brown. "Even the windows. It would be the most beautiful thing in the world."

The next day, Martin is hung over to the point of non-existence. Everyone else is at the bar.

"Are you steaming yet?" Stuart asks Dominic.

"I'll find out when I have to walk."

Bergen is still six hours away.

A lot has changed for Mogwai in the two-and-a-half years since they first went to Norway. Then they were four, having just released their fourth single, 'New Paths to Helicon', and quite innocent to the ways of the world.

Now, however, they are five - multi-purpose instrumental superman and humorist Barry Burns has been staunch in the line up for more than 12 months - and exemplars of group strength. Quite apart from the prodigious recorded output, what with two albums, three EPs - the new four tracker is their lushest and loveliest yet - and a host of remixes and one-offs strewn generously all over the place, Mogwai have indelibly punched their presence onto the world's musical landscape.

They are revered in a series of European countries, where audiences stand rapt before the incandescent barrage of noise and beauty. America increasingly adores their non-conformist skills combined with the ability to rock like proverbial motherfuckers. And in Britain, Mogwai have become nothing less than a defining badge of honour to anyone who believes music can actually mean more than just hollow cant, corporate product placement and careerist egotism.

At this year's Glastonbury they blew the minds of many thousands, providing the event with a fittingly spectral climax. Mogwai demonstrate then that purity needn't necessarily be incompatible with popularity.

Or fun. In July, the combination of a need to design some new merchandise and a five-minute tour bus joke at the expense of Blur led to the creation of the year's essential rock 'n' roll fashion item. On the band's recent American tour, the 'Blur: Are Shite' T-shirts sold frantically, not least to Blur fans. Damon Albarn himself called Mogwai's UK publicist to order a consignment. But the gesture ignited a torent of abusive letters and e-mails that turned Mogwai into the stuff of tabloid outrage. Unperturbed, they designed a companion shirt that reads simply and truthfully - 'Mogwai: Are Tremendous'.

To top everything, Mogwai's current UK tour ends at home, in the Barrowlands, Glasgow's venerable venue of legends. It will be the party of all parties. Not bad work for an obscure bunch of post-rock scamps from Lanarkshire, led by a young man accused of being an 'insipid, fat, baldy wee dwarf'.

"There's been a lot of big things this year, it's been good. It's been a good year to be in Mogwai."

Stuart Braithwaite is a happy chap. He's finally in Norway, Scotland have qualified for the Euro-2000 play-offs, and there's a pint to hand. Breezing unmolested through customs, Mogwai elected to do what always must be done in Bergen: take the funicular railway 1000ft up Mount Floyen. From here, there's a spectactular view of the city and the Puddefjorden, where incoming ships blow their horns with the power of Thor and in the saddest of all keys. We had hoped to see the large troll which stands guard at the summit, but the troll has apparently been removed for repairs. Stuart blinks through the rain and cracks a typically terrible joke. "Life up here must really take it's troll on you"

Dominic, John and Martin grimace. Barry, though, attempts a trump card.

"That's it, I'm off gnome!"

Barry Burns is a key element in Mogwai's emboldened spirit, endlessly ebullient and generous in his musical contributions to the others, unlike the band's previous fifth element, Brendan O'Hare. It's hard to conceive of Mogwai having existed without him.

"I've become a bit more worldly over the course of the year," he considers. "It feels like a really long year to me bit I've enjoyed it. Usually you asociate long years with being a drag, but it's not been like that at all. Feels like I've been 23 for ages! It was great when I joined and it's really exciting still. Free food! I mean," he pats his tummy happily, "that really is the epitome of fun for me! Fuckin' hundreds of burgers!"

"We get on a lot better than we used to," says Stuart. "The actually day-to-day business and politics of being in a band has become easier for us, but musically I think that because we've done so much at this stage it's more difficult for us to do anything worthy, because we never wanted to repeat ourselves and a lot of the things people might think or considerations for us at this stage are nothing to do with why we started the band. Like money and that kind of thing. I think if we broke up it would be because the music wasn't there any more. I'm sure, I'm almost certain that we'll all be really good friends till we're dead, because we've been through so much. But if we broke up it would be because we weren't that good any more, or we didn't have any tunes, and I can't really see that happening. Even if we started doing tunes that no-one liked apart from us we'd still be doing tunes that we liked. And I remember us doing our tunes to nobody apart from ourselves for quite a long time without complaining! We didn't used to sell 70, 000 copies whenever we got something together in Martin's bedroom."

Are there any bands you're scared of?

"There are a few bands that I think are better than us, but I don't think there's a band that I'd feel bad about playing with. A year or so ago there were certain bands I wouldn't go on the same stage as. Bands like Low. Who I always just thought were incredible. But I feel we can justify ourselves musically better than we could before, whereas we used to justify ourselves by me opening my mouth and letting rip with a whole load of horrendous twaddle! Heheheheh! Two years ago we wouldn't have been playing the Barrowlands. It's a big thing for us."

Martin: "When we started the band we said, 'Right, that's our ambition, to play the Barras, on our own'."

Dominic: "It was sort of a joke, an impossible dream."

Stuart: "And now it's gonna happen. I reckon it's going to be like the ultimate whitey comedown the after we've played the Barras."

Martin: "I dunno man, I felt quite weird after the Glastonbury gig. I can remember coming offstage and thinking, 'What do we do now?'"

Dominic stares at his bandmate evenly. "I did not have that problem. I knew exactly what we were doing. We were getting pished."

The incentive hurled at Mogwai in the wake of their dramatic contribution to the rag trade fell mainly into two categories. Firstly, that Blur were not, in fact, shite after all.

"I couldn't believe it," says Stuart of the ensuing hoo-hah. "The bad thing was that it ended up looking as if it was premeditated, and a bit like that band that did the 'Richey is Dead' single. Where in fact it was just us having a laugh one day. But again, when we started the band it was like, we hate Blur and we want to play the Barrowlands. Now everyone knows we hate Blur and we are gonna play the Barrowlands. So we cannae moan."

Then there were the letters, predominatly with Glaswegian postmarks, denouncing Mogwai as unattractive and accusing them of faking some sort of working-class authenticity by wearing sports clothing and titling their albums after Glasgow street gangs. The puerile nadir came when it was pointed out that both Dominic and John had both attended private school.

"It was hilarious when that guy wrote that letter in. It's not as if we talk about drinking loads of Buckie on a Friday night then go and tan some cunt's jaw in."

"It's a fucking joke!!!"

Stuart is giggling helplessly. "John was entitled to be upset, 'cos he went to a private school on a scholarship, hahaha! He's genuinely poor!"

Poor, but clever...

Dominic: "Where as I was this thick cunt but my folks were minted!"

Stuart: "The posh mongol and the brainy tink! Ah, such is the small world of Glasgow!"

Hit the road with Mogwai and you shall discover many fruitful ways to pass time. Like trying to breakdance to the new Papa M album (not easy). Or watching Stuart revelling in his new skateboard, a record company freebie with the tell-tale 'Everlast' logo customised by Dominic and a black marker pen to read 'Buckfast' instead. (Mogwai? With their reputation?!)

You shall also feel the power of Camp Killyourself, a band from North Carolina who provide the hack metal soundtrack to a'fiim'caiied Landspeed. Tell us about Landspeed, Stuart.

"Landspeed? It's a pseudo skate video. Tell him about Landspeed, John!"

John: "it's brilliant."

"Basically it features acts of idiocy, such as..." Such as throwing a dummy man off a bridge onto a moving car, jumping off a shopping mall balcony into a tree, four guys with names like Thomas Shitt, Larry Potemkin and Kelly Goosecock playing backyard football... And so on. Mogwai have watched it at least once, every day, for the past two months.

"Films take up a lot of our time," says Barry.

"A good way to spend our time," says Stuart. "Stigmata is one of the worst films I've ever seen! It is brutal! And I'm not a fussy man. It looks like a cross between a fanny pad advert and a heavy metal video. With a worse story line than both."

This merry brand of chaos is overseen with unflappable patience by tour manager Simon Smith, who as drummer for The Wedding Present appeared on Top Of The Pops 12 times.

"And that was just in the one year!" chortles Stuart. "He used to be more famous than we'll ever be, so that helps us keep our feet on the ground!"

If there's one thinq Stuart has had second thoughts about this year it's calling Puff Daddy "Antichrist" on the 'Come On Die Young' LP, on discovering just how much power Mr Combs wieids.

"He's a bampot! I was shitting it at the LA gig in case he came in with his fuckin' thugs and mowed us down, while singing a rap over 'Itsy Bitsy Teensy Weensy Yellow Polka Dot Bikini'!"

Quite. Somewhat amazingly, it transpires that Mogwai were approached before Ultrasound's Tiny Wood to be Red Or Dead's clothes horses at London Fashion Week. They politely declined.

Dominic: "Can you imagine?!"

Stuart: "it would have been crap! We should just stick to what we're good at."

What's that? "Playing 15 minute-long songs with two chords. Hahahaha!"

Barry: "Ohhh God!!!"

The boy Burns clutches his stomach, so it must be time for more food. Seven hours and two takeaways later, he's stage right with Mogwai, doing his bit on 500 quid's worth slab of Valhalla called the Sherman tank, all for the premeture deafening of a club-full of awe-struck Bergen youth. These people know that to see and hear this band right now is feel everything rock 'n' roll was ever meant to be. Attitude. Soul. Integrity.

Only louder. And better. With a game of backyard football thrown in. At the last, the picture's as clear as day: if you are telling me you thought it was Thomas Shitt, you gotta be kidding me. It was Kelly Goosecock who nailed that 75-yarder...