MUSLIMGAUZE Vinilo y CD

Review: The late great Muslimgauze was always way ahead of the curve with the music he made. Whenever you think you have a handle on it you will discover another mind-bending work. Al-Zulfiquar Shaheed is a 75-minute testament to that from 1994 that is a journey into hypnotic, Eastern-inspired soundscapes. Comprising five extended compositions, it showcases Bryn Jones' unparalleled ability to weave intricate textures of Arabic percussion, droning keyboards and evocative vocal samples. The album is both rhythmic and melodic and brilliantly immersive while being steeped in ethereal tones and cultural depth. Its detailed, flowing arrangements highlight Jones' genius for crafting mesmerising, long-form works that resonate deeply all these years on.

Review: Even by the standards of the late, great Bryn Jones AKA Muslimgauze - an artist whose enormous catalogue has only grown since his death in 1999 - Rhiza Coil of Resin is something of an obscurity - a set previously only available as part of a rare box set. It was reportedly recorded at some point following the release of Narcotic (1997) and explores many of the same sonic themes. Here available as a standalone CD for the first time, the five tracks variously touch on lo-fi, delay-laden drum & bass ('Deceive For Yourself'), redlined bass and mangled breakbeats (both takes on the suitably heavy 'Arab Quarter'), experimental electronic noise meets ambient acid ('Why Iraq') and deep, dubbed-out trip-hop ('Effendi') - all peppered with his usual Arabic spoken word samples, field recordings and found sounds.

Review: It has been 25 years since Bryn Jones left us for the great musical odyssey in the sky, and reissuing Lo Fi India Abuse is a fitting way to honour a true musical visionary who is pretty much impossible to pigeonhole or accurately describe. Nevertheless, this record, as with many of his near-countless others, offers a great insight into the breadth and bold sense of adventure running through his output.

As dense and complex as anything he gave fans and followers in his decade and a half of putting out sounds, this outing first landed the year after his death, and by that point a musical identity was more than fully formed. Highly percussive, littered with aural motifs from far away lands, filtered through noise and disruption, it's an exotic form of IDM, as compelling and immediate as beguiling and off-centre.

Review: The late great Muslimgauze is a cult figure when it comes to experimental electronic music. He made several revered records that have been reissued since his death and helped to reassert his status. Maroon is a work that like much of his output brings space, colour, depth, and illusion to sound. It is densely layered and textured and finds Bryn Jones, the Mancunian behind Muslimgauze, assaulting all the senses. From the rusty sounds and smeared voices of 'Thimble Cups Of Urdu' to the dense collage of drones, tin pot hits and obscured mutterings of 'Harem Of Dogs' this is a brilliantly idiosyncratic work.

Review: 25 years after his tragic, unexpected and untimely death, Muslimgauze's music still stands out as a landmark - not to mention huge - collection of bold experimental journeys into the farthest reaches of electronics. The fact he was doing this in a very different time, long before beats and basslines started looking outside the US-European axis for influence, and when equipment was analogue, only makes the legacy more impressive.

One of several reissues of the Manchester underground noise hero's albums, all aimed at commemorating the sad anniversary, Emak Bakia is in many ways a more traditional dance music album than most of his others, and as such will hopefully find favour in contemporary record bags bound for clubs with more open music policies. From raw drums and sparse atmospheres, to driving Arabic-edged techno and hypnotic, low-slung groovers, it still sounds as fresh today as when we first heard it.

Review: We're delighted there is such a good run of reissues of music from the cult and late Mancunian experimenter that was Muslimgauze. We're also fans of the fact it is coming across multiple formats, with this one coming on CD and vinyl. The man born Bryn Jones made everything from noise to industrial to big beat to deeply seductive and inventive house music, often with some seriously heady political overtones. Khan Younis might be him at his best with plenty of unique tribal dub-trance sounds and many rich influences from Arabic culture with hypnotic rhythms and eastern melodic vibes. A real doozy that is still way ahead of its time.

Review: Muslimgauze's Veiled Sisters, ironically, is but one of many releases by the timely artist to have been posthumously 'unveiled' with new attention cast on it. Originally released with longtime collaborators Staalplaat, the LP was notable for its deepouts and loop-based orientations, moving away from the stop-start wonk of dub into straighter rhythms and sample-based orientations. Essentially made up of variations on the same two-note motif, the album cycles through mega-crisp drums and modular jump and pops, creating a curiously sepia-tinged beatscape, recalling near-fantastical ideas of the Middle Eastern world as ever.

Review: Pulled from the labyrinthine archives of the eternally mystical Muslimgauze, Muhammadunize was originally released as the first disc of Fatah Guerilla in 1996. It was recorded and mixed at the Abraham Mosque in Manchester, and it captures the essence of Bryn Jones' imperious project in perfect form. Drawing heavily on Arabic musical motifs and fusing them with a haunting post-industrial sound palette, there's nothing else in the musical world quite like Muslimgauze. This particular reissue also features 'Intifadah (Extended Remix)', which originally came out in 1988 on the Iran release. This vinyl pressing is a must for fans and new arrivals to Jones' work alike.

Review: Muslimgauze was an experimental visionary up until their passing, with a 96 title discography that has since more than doubled in posthumous rereleases and unreleased material. The British electronic producer's work all revolved around ideas and discourse in the Muslim sphere, with stories that obviously bear repeating. This release is a standalone reissue of CD3 from the 1996 triple album 'Fatah Guerrilla', a melodic and oftentimes industrial pounding - with 10-second loops repeated with liquid bass and interspersed vocal samples such as on 'Guilded Gulag Mind-er'. It's easiest to describe the album as a sonical collage, with sections clipping into each other and distorting like a scratched record like on 'Gifts from an Afghan''. 'Chechnya Over Dub' is a fantastic opportunity to dive headfirst into the expanded Muslimgauze universe.

Review: Originally released in 1997, just two years before his untimely passing, Farouk Enjineer is one of Muslimgauze's most celebrated albums and arrived at a time when the concept behind this production project had been fully realised. It also landed at a point when his output was best described as relentless (the artist would put out 96 titles before his death), which only serves to accentuate how incredibly consistent he was, and the kind of work rate he had achieved.

One of Muslimgauze's 'power noise' epics, tracks are made from some incredibly vivid and strange parts, but these are used as building blocks for much more recognisable overall arrangements. Some of the work here defines downtempo late night breaks, other parts share more in common with the traditional sounds of the regions the artist looked to for inspiration. All are essentially crafted from abstract sounds.

Review: Bryn Jones was nothing short of an enigma. The UK producer managed to ensure his work would always be regarded as a collector's item while simultaneously ensuring very little chance of success outside the farthest flung reaches of the experimental electronic and noise communities. Putting out over 90 original albums for 32 labels in his time under the Muslimgauze moniker, all of which were very limited releases, his ideas were as impressive as the inspiration was staunchly political.

Not that you would necessarily be able to tell from the tracks themselves. Taking elements of Middle Eastern, Arabesque, dub, industrial, and percussive electronica, his work is born from deep dives into Muslim culture and history, and the finished results were wildly ahead of their time - atmospheric, musically adventurous, hypnotic and, more often than not, unarguably danceable. Such is the case here.

Review: It's nice to get a new edition of Muslimgauze's 'Emia Bakia', a long out-of-print and hard to find album from 1994, because the album remains one of the most unique in the late, great producer's vast catalogue. The set's uniqueness lies in the surprising shape and focus of the rhythms that Muslimgauze utilised on the album; while as percussion-rich as ever, and often cloaked in his usual dark ambient sounds, dub-influenced basslines and Eastern exoticism, the beats are regularly far more dancefloor-focused than you'd expect. This isn't otherworldly ambient dub, but rather some mind-altering mutation of psychedelic house music that still sounds like nothing else around.

Review: "Plug in your headphones, drown out the world, and set out on a mystic voyage of Earth through the lens of Kybele," reads the blurb for this unarguably cinematic electronic album. It's not hard to understand where the producer is coming from with that description - with so many soundscapes happening on this record it's hard to know where to begin. What's more important, though, is the authenticity that each style is treated with. The space-age sci-fi ambience of 'Phones' doesn't feel like the stereotypical tacked-on interlude which has plagued lazy dance records for aeons. The pseudo-80s synth grooves of 'Phase Lines' are no cheap pastiche efforts. Throw in some warm, rave-informed downtempo ('Yahuda') and low slung percussive chug ('Culto') and you start to understand our point.

Review: One of the finest single albums in the vast catalogue of the late, great Muslimgauze, "Salaam Alekum, Bastard" first appeared in stores in 1995 and was dedicated to "the invisible hands of revenge". Musically, it's typical of the prolific artist's material during the period, delivering a string of intoxicating, otherworldly soundscapes crafted from Arabic percussion, ambient dub rhythms, Middle Eastern instrumentation, spaced-out electronics, snippets of radio and television broadcasts, and overheard conversations in a myriad of languages. Mixed together to form a constantly changing sound soup that somehow manages to be creepy, paranoid and picturesque, the album remains a stunning piece of work.

Review: He may not have been on this planet since the late 1990s, but the late, great Bryn Jones continues to dazzle from beyond the grave. The latest in a long line of posthumous albums offers another chance to own one of his greatest moments, 23-minute 1996 cut "Arab Jerusalem": a superb sound soup rich in atmospheric field recordings, snatched Arabic radio chatter, hazy ambient electronics, sporadic bursts of hand percussion and unearthly female vocal snippets. Perhaps more alluring for dedicated fans are the three previously unreleased tracks that Staalplaat has plucked from the Manchester producer's vast archives. The standout is undoubtedly "Jordan River", a twenty-minute chunk of sparse, mind-altering electro-dub/ambient dub fusion from the DJ Spooky school of "illbient" that's simply essential.

Review: While the legendary Muslimgauze had, indeed, put out a striking amount of music while he was still alive, 1995's Maroon has gone somewhat unnoticed and underappreciated. Originally out as a CD via Holland's Staalplaat, the imprint have (RIGHTFULLY) decided to release it on vinyl format for the first time, which is literally music to our ears! The Manchester artist, who has been sorely missed since 1999 (RIP!), has inspired a whole generation of artists, most noticeable the likes of Skull Disco and Shackleton. The structure and the aesthetic of the arrangements on this thing is pure GAUZE, coming through with a rhythmic sway of glitch, Eastern vocal swarms, and something altogether more 'tech'. He was, surely, one of the greatest pioneers of the 80s and 90s, and his music should simply be heard, not discussed. We're pretty sure that you'll be stuck in a trance from the moment that first beat drops. 10/10.

Review: More rare and previously unreleased recordings from the late Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze have been collected by Staalplaat on the Ali Zaarin LP for their Muslimgauze Archive series. As it says in the liner notes "Even more than most Muslimgauze releases, "Ali Zarin" sounds like it could have come out 20 years ago and be equally contemporary." In all its three parts, the harsh textural and bass driven proto- IDM experiments of "Ali Zarin" were so ahead of their time like the vast majority of Jones' other works. There are several untitled tracks simply titled "Demo" which feature exotic middle eastern rhythmic journeys that are more familiar of his work and also captivating enough for the legend's most discerning followers

Review: Muslimgauze is given the Vinyl On Demand treatment! Bryn Jones work as Muslimgauze has been
retrospectively compared to Dominick Fernow's Vatican Shadow for his occasional forays into rougher texture as well as the politically charged subtext, but the music is a lot more wide-ranging, moving from an early industrial influence into something much more psychedelic, making his music feel more relevant today than ever. Chasing The Shadow of Bryn Jones 1983-1988 may only make a dent in Jones' career, and the price tag will put off all but the most affluent of interested Muslimgauze completists, but the ten LPs highlight how crucial an influence his mid 80s output remains on modern music. Includes 208-page book, A1 poster, and 15-track CD compiled By Charles Powne of Soleilmoon.

Review: 
This marks a first ever vinyl issue of some superbly raw and experimental dub collabs between Muslimgauze and The Rootsman. They were all written and laid down at Bradford's Third Eye Studio between 1997 and 1998 and first came on CD, strangely, via Russian label Aquarelist. The heavy bottom ends are run through with various different vibes from industrial to more tropical and intoxicating, tribal to ambient synth work. It's a deeply immersive listen that takes you a million miles away. And we are all looking for those sorts of experience right now.

Review: The late great Muslimgauze has one of the most unique sounds in electronic music, even now, many year son. His fusion of the electronic and the ethnic, the experimental and the noisy is in a class of one. Return To The City Of Djinn came first back in 1999 and is the seance of two collabs between John Bolloten aka The Rootsman and Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze. It is a mash up of The Rootsman's Into The Light and 52 Days to Timbuktu albums with added Arab cultural references from Jones. There are cut up loops, glassy effects, dub drums and well rod vocal fragments that make for an atmospheric sound track to a stroll through a busy Eastern city.