'Lockerbie has run through our lives' - Mogwai soundtrack BBC1 drama
'I remember the gravity of it from the way it was being spoken about on the news, and the way my parents were talking about it. I knew this was a really tragic, disastrous event. It's still a big story to this day. It has run through our whole lives ever since it happened.'
Now, the story has become part of his own life, after his band were asked by director Michael Keillor to score the soundtrack for his telling of the tragic events of 21 December 1988.
The result, The Bombing of Flight 103, airs tonight on BBC1 starring Peter Mullan and Connor Swindells and featuring Mogwai's distinctive cinematic sound.
Mogwai have scored the new drama (Image: free)Braithwaite said: 'We get asked about soundtracks quite a lot these days and they're not always the easiest to fit into our schedule because we play a lot of gigs. But when this came in we were all excited. I read the script and thought it was really good.
'I had a call with Michael the director and we got on really well. He's really down to earth for people who work in that industry. So we were really excited to do it. We've never been involved in something explicitly Scottish before, even though we've been doing soundtrack stuff for nearly two decades.'
The band's previous film scores include American sci-fi flick Kin and Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. Braithwaite found parallels in the experiences of working on the Lockerbie story and Atomic: Living In Dread and Promise, Mark Cousins' 2015 documentary about key events of the nuclear age, including the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He said: 'We have a lot of fun in this band. We are good pals, and we're having a really good time but every night after playing along with the Atomic film we were just sitting staring at the floor. We went through the ringer. And there were parts with this project when it was the same, especially because the performances are so good and it's all based on real people. You can't help but be drawn into it. Hopefully that has inspired the music in some way too.
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'There's an extra pressure in the expectation of the gravity of the music you have to try to come up with. Barry [Burns], our piano player, wrote most of the music for this. Our music is inherently morose, which helps a little bit. But I was very impressed by the sensitivity that the writers had in regards to heir connection with the local community, and how careful they've been.'
None of the band visited Lockerbie ahead of recording, working instead from references identified by director Keillor from within their own canon.
He said: 'We're lucky, Michael likes our music. We have done quite a few projects where we've been given other musicians' work as reference points, which can be bewildering. Michael's references were all from our own music, the tone and sound palette was ours, which was massively helpful.'
Braithwaite was in a select audience for a Bafta Scotland preview screening in Glasgow last week, and was reassured with the end product.
'Sometimes working with film and TV you can think something's good and it doesn't always turn out as well as you hoped it might,' he said.
'But I actually think this is better. My biggest hope was that people will like it, and that was put to bed the other night. I'm really happy with it. I'm confident they've told this story in a sensitive and compelling way. I think it does a good job at portraying Scottish people. It's been good to be involved in something that tells an important story but also reflects the country so well. Cora Bisset is also in it and she played cello with Mogwai for a while, so I like that connection too.'
The band's score for the BBC/Netflix co-production has also been released as a 50 minute album this weekend.
He added: 'We haven't always made albums of all our soundtracks as pleased as we might have been with the music. We don't think that anyone wants to sit for an hour listening without watching. But when we were recording it quickly became quite obvious that this music would work on its own without the film.'
The transmission of The Bombing of Flight 103 is just one part of a big weekend for Mogwai - the band also play Glasgow's Barrowland tonight.
Braithwaite said: 'As the first episode goes on TV we'll be goin on stage at the Barras at the very same time. That's a nice piece of synchronicity.'
The Bombing Of Pan AM 103 begins tonight at 9pm on BBC1
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