Muslimgauze: Iran

I posted about Muslimgauze earlier this year so I won't get into his background again. If you want to know a little about him reference the earlier post...In fact, the comment in response to that post is even better and does him more justice than I did.

I've been slowly downloading the portions of his catalog that I do not already have from emusic. They have about 34 titles but if you want to go completest you will be looking at upwards of 200...

Iran is only three tracks long but packs in about 35 minutes of music across those tracks. The two strongest tracks are the "epics": "Lion of Kandahar" and "Intifadah" (included below for download). The first clocks in at over 10 minutes and the second at 17-plus.

It's not just quantity, though. Each track has a really simple, kick-drum-driven beat with a variety of percussion loops, drones and what seem like found sounds. There is a real exhilarating, improvised feeling to both of these mixes which make it hard to believe they are the work of one guy armed with some percussion instruments and synthesizers...

Muslimgauze: Intifadah
from Iran

Browse the Muslimgauze catalog on emusic.

Muslimgauze

With songs named after an infamous Palestinian refugee camp and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Muslimgauze was about as confrontational an artist that this era could produce.

This snippet about Muslimgauze, from Wikipedia, should be enough to get you intrigued...

"Muslimgauze was the stage name of Bryn Jones (June 17, 1961 - January 14, 1999), a prolific British electronic music artist, strongly influenced by everything to do with the Middle East....He was a staunch supporter of Hamas and the PLO, and he believed Palestine should be "freed from the Zionists." Born in Manchester, England, United Kingdom, he never visited the Middle East, explaining, "I don't think you can visit an occupied land. It's the principle. Not until it's free again.""

As early back as 1982, his music was about protest - initially in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Wikipedia counts "90 original albums on 32 different record labels, creating nearly 2,000 original songs". Including re-issues, his release total is estimated at over 180 albums. His official website lists 192.

His art, not his politics, interests me, as well as the bizarre nature of his "career". Pick out three albums at random from his discography and you may well get three very different sounds from ambient, to noise, to percussion, etc. A hater, but an interesting cat.

Download Muslimgauze, two tracks from Intifaxa

Get any gifts of music?

I have not finished trading presents with everyone on my list but I did get a couple of CD gems already, the first of which I am posting an MP3 from...

My first experience with Simon Shaheen was his 1991 CD of the music of Mohamed Abdel Wahab, one of the most important songwriters and musicians in modern Middle Eastern music. Several years later I managed to catch him live at a festival on the Yale campus where he both performed and spoke, discussing the oud, his own musical upbringing and the music of Persia and Arabia. I was somewhat disappointed by his Blue Flame CD, initially thinking it was a total pandering to the NPR crowd, though it has grown on me over the years (as I have joined the NPR crowd, perhaps...).

The disc I received the other day, though, was one I somehow missed out on when it first came out. It is more traditional, in the spirit of his Mohamed Abdel Wahab release and while I am still digging into it, I wanted to post this one MP3 for you. I am sure more tracks from the CD will surface on my mixes in 2007. Enjoy.

Simon Shaheen: Sama'i Farahfaza
from Turath: Masterworks of the Middle East

Burning Dervish Vol One

We're hoping to roll out 2 or 3 mixes a month as we comb through our trove of music...this first collection really speaks to where we've been at for the better part of 2006 - lots of music from the Middle East, Africa, the Carribean and South America. There will probably be several compilations along these lines, especially given 1. that we've recently stepped into about 16GB of rare reggae and dub MP3s and 2. our eMusic "saved for later" download list is jam-packed with jems they continue to surface from around the world...As with our individual MP3 posts the link to download Burning Dervish Vol One will expire seven days from this post going up...Enjoy and let us know what you think).

1. Maduba (Crisis Creation), DXT, from Reanimator: Black Market Science. DXT, essentially the inventor of turntablism, laying down futuristic, apocalyptic, electronic dub. Produced by Bill Laswell.


2. Telegram Dub (African Postman), Burning Spear, from Living Dub, Vol. 2, the dub companion to Spear's classic Hail H.I.M.. It's one's chocolate to the other's peanut butter...


3. Im Ninalou, DJ Cheb I Sabbah, from, La Kahena. A Sufi, a Jew and a Berber walked into a bar...


4. Allegro, Sanjay Mishra, from, Blue Incantation. We originally picked this record up to catch the three tracks Jerry Garcia contributed to in what turned out to be some of his last sessions and then shrugged the record off as new age fluff. Coming back to it many years later we were really sucked in by some of Mishra's melodic guitar playing. Turns out Jerry's parts are the weakest of the record...


5. Exodus, Bob Marley, from, Dreams of Freedom: Ambient Translations of Bob Marley in Dub, one of our "desert island discs" of the 1990s and one of the best examples of that era's output of "ambient dub". Exodus and The Heathen are the stand-out tracks.


6. Water No Get Enemy, Fela Kuti, from Expensive Shit. Jamming defiant funk from the Kalkuta Republic.


7. In These Times, Errol Walker, from Lee "Scratch" Perry's Arkology box set. There are a million ways to get into Scratch Perry given that he has produced literally countless reggae and dub sides, but this box set might be the best way. Lots of notes and info to send you on your way...This guys talent is impossible to measure or describe.


8. Dance Mediterrane, Simon Shaheen & Qantara, from Blue Flame. Shaheen has made more "authentic" records but the playing on this record really legitimizes the fusion style.


9. Jah Works, The Gladiators, from Dreadlocks, the Time Is Now . This is such a deep record. Some serious spirit runs through the entire enterprise...


10. Roll Jordan Roll, Wingless Angels from Wingless Angels. A Keith Richards side project in which he recorded some Nyabinghi sessions at his home in Jamaica, laid in the most perfect bass and guitar lines and produced a rootsy, acoustic, trance of a record. Almost makes you wish Keith would quit his day job to follow his own muse more often. Really.


11. Dem a Come, The Abyssinians, from Arise. Deep roots and equisite melodies make this record...


12. Herbsman Shuffle, King Stitt & Andy Capp, from Tighten Up: Trojan Reggae Classics 1968-74. This track is from a 2-disc "best of" the Trojan series of Tighten Up compilations. Bad-ass throughout with lots of gems. Herbsman is one of our key tracks.


13. Mela Mela, Mahmoud Ahmed, from Ethiopiques, Vol. 6: Almaz. As of this writing there are 21(!) volumes in this series of Ethiopian music spanning traditional, tribal sounding music to modern Ethiopian music, which, from the late-60s thru mid-70s was all about soul, jazz and mellow funk. It is a thrill to listen to most of this stuff and Mahmoud Ahmed is widely held to be the premier practitioner of the sound.

Download Burning Dervish Vol 1 here. Check out the albums these tracks are from here.