Go see Mogwai’s ‘Burning’ at Echoplex on Sunday

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Most rock concert films are victory laps for a successful band or weird hyper-dramatizations of the live-show experience. Mogwai’s ‘Burning’ is something else entirely. This recording of the instrumental Scottish band’s 2009 shows at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg is both stark and somber, yet offers maybe the most thorough document of their power as performers yet.

The austere black-and-white vision of directors Vincent Moon and Nathanael Le Scouarnec -- of the popular and quite moving Take-Away Show series -- serves as a perfect foil to the band’s meticulous ambiance. No one does a song-long crescendo better, and the directors understand the songs’ pacing and payoffs.

But when the band’s tidal brutality hits (and wow, does it), the combined effect is like something out of Michael Mann -- glorious, perfectly choreographed violence imbued with dread and exhilaration. It’ll be even better on a big screen.

-- August Brown

Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Blvd., 7:30 p.m. Sun. Free and all ages. www.attheecho.com.