★Staalplaat
Kashmiri Queens
»Kashmiri Queens« – previously released as a limited CD – presents a more accessible side of Muslimgauze, featuring a faster tempo and fewer sonic overtones than his previous endeavors. The music's core is rooted in drone and raga samples complemented by a rich array of ethnic percussions. This 12inch stands out for its authenticity, allowing the sounds of tablas, sitars, and various ethnic wind instruments to flourish openly without being interrupted. There's a notable departure from the usual …
Three Music Machines
300 copies limited edition From 1985, the beginning of their collaboration in Amsterdam, Peter Bosch and Simone Simons have been involved in performances, concerts and theatre productions. Since 1990, however, they have focused in particular on the development of autonomous music machines.
All these machines are dynamic: Sound and movement are constantly evolving. »Krachtgever« is their best-known piece for its Golden Nica, received at Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, 1998. The other projects on the …
Ratchets/Motors
*300 copies limited edition* "Jens Brands has created a large number of installations, musical performances, and interactive media works. He uses the concepts of parallel activities rather than ideas of fusion. The pieces presented on this recording focus on sonic events related to electronic music (such as intense volumes and dynamics, white noise, square or sine waves) but stay entirely acoustic. On a live performance of the ratchets, the sounds are generated with the idea of a physical, scul…
Muhammadunize
* Edition of 700 * Recorded and mixed at Abraham Mosque, Manchester 1996, this is a re-release of Muslimlim 009, only C2 taken from stdc 001. Listeners who know much of anything about Bryn Jones’ work as Muslimgauze know that he was prolific in both his work and Muhammadunize, has what could be called a classic feel to it, with a very familiar blend of drones, string instruments, and synths, and varying percussion/break-beat patterns, in turn mixed with a number of hard-to-catch vocal samples…
Jackal The Invizible (2LP)
*Edition of 700 * Listeners who know much of anything about Bryn Jones' work as Muslimgauze know that he was prolific in both his work and in the way he sent out his work to labels and other interested parties. Fittingly enough for an artist that feverishly productive and often taciturn to the point of frustration, he didn't tend to give much more information than handwritten track titles on the sleeve of a DAT. Why he would submit multiple copies of the same or similar tracks to those he worked…
Sine~Plus (LP)
*Limited edition of 200 copies. Purple LP in a purple inner sleeve between two perforated metallic coloured paper sheets in a plastic cover that is silk-screened by hand* Sine is one of the earlier works by renowned sound-artist, composer and sound designer, Radboud Mens. It was constructed in 1998 and released on CD by Staalplaat in 2000 who now reissue this on vinyl in 2021, featuring an entire side of new material. Having forged out a unique path in music for many years this is a means by w…
Noisephony of Lawn Mowers (LP)
*Limited to 300 copies* Taavi Suisalu is an Estonian media artist particularly interested into complex and adventurous sounds, field recordings, and harsh audio emergencies, organized under the form of symphony or as a result of performative interactions. In 2014, Suisalu received the Young Estonian Artist Prize as curator of Project of In-existent Villages, an articulate exhibition full of installations and site-specific sound performances. The use of peripheral spaces and the crossovers, somet…
Narcotic
Narcotic is perhaps one example of an album in both camps of the Muslimgauze spectrum, it denotes the expertise acquired in oriental percussion by Bryn Jones after a crescent development and practice through action, part Tribal, part Ambient with shades of texturized noise, glitch details and field recordings, as result the listener is inside this intoxicant atmosphere of exotic madness, where the basic musical premise constituted by the consistent tribal beats from darbukas and tambourines cont…
Islamic Songs
The sun always shines bright, very bright in the Middle East. Windows open up and we hear music. Not the music by Muslimgauze, but traditional music. We hear the Adhan, the call for prayer, the souk and people talking. Music comes from all directions -- rhythmic, mysterious, monotonous perhaps, but swirling like a dervish, round and round it goes. The music of Islam was such an inspiration for Bryn Jones (1961-1999), although perhaps "inspiration" probably doesn't justify the seemingly endless f…
Sadaam's Children
Long-time Muslimgauze fans with keen eyes and/or photographic memories may immediately notice something about the newly unearthed Sadaams Children album; with some slight orthographic differences, it just about shares a name with a short track from the classic Narcotic (Staalplaat, 1997; the similarity and the difference is pretty much expected from someone who both liked to reuse names and didn’t care for consistency in spelling as Bryn Jones did). While none of the four lengthy tracks found on…
Ffroggssichorddd
**200 copies** A famous English conductor said that the harpsichord sounded like "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof". An instrument that was once the basis of every orchestra and chamber ensemble was long ago replaced by the stronger and, for some, sweeter sounding piano. Now the harpsichord is very much the preserve of specialists and early-music supporters and has seen very little progress in design. Enter architect and musical philosopher John Körmeling. In addition to designing utopian …
Lalique Gadaffi Handgrenade
**700 copies** Incredible late '90s dub-noise gear from Muslimgauze resurfaces along with previously unreleased, genius electro-dub goodies in the latest Staalplaat volley. Can a person ever have enough Muslimgauze records? The answer is a firm no, and Arab Jerusalem (1996), found on the A-side, is a sterling example of the Manchester-based outlier at his trippy, expressive best, swirling samples of Arabic voices in a thick mist of dubwise FX with sloshing tabla and drones that seem to fade in a…
Babylon Is Iraq
**500 numbered copies. sold out at source** Unsurprisingly for a creator as prolific as Muslimgauze's Bryn Jones was, when he was asked for a contribution for any sort of group project, he would tend to provide more options than necessary. In the case of longtime label Staalplaat's 1996 compilation Sonderangebot, where Jones would find himself in the company of everyone from Charlemagne Palestine to Reptilicus, the selected track was the characteristically head-spinning Kaliskinazure, nine minut…
Azzazin
Azzazin is a double standout Muslimgauze album, first LP originally issued in 1996, as a CD (Muslimgauze Subscription 003); the second disc originally as a 10" of remixes (Muslimgauze Subscription 007). This 2LP adds two unreleased tracks. Tightly focused on a singular palette of monotone drones and swarming electronic buzzes, which arguably sound like a parallel to early Editions Mego. They're probably the most minimalist Muslimgauze tracks you've heard, and even still he manages to express a f…
Ingaza
Staalplaat presents a double LP reissue of Muslimgauze's Ingaza, originally released in 1999 (the year of his death) as part of the Box Of Silk And Dogs set. Those not familiar with Bryn Jones's style will listen slack-jawed at the sheer anticipatory nature of his sound collages. He was a cult artist, politically motivated for the Arab-Palestinian cause and a seminal experimenter with ethnic samples' and minimal and electronic rhythms. The atmospheres retain their original charm, full and gloomy…
Mullah Said
Edition of 500. First vinyl edition; originally released on CD in 1998. Those not familiar with Bryn Jones's style will listen slack-jawed at the shear anticipatory nature of his sound collage. The six lengthy tracks on Mullah Said are based on hypnotic and somewhat menacing grooves: a repetitive dub bass beat, waves of Middle Eastern strings and voices, layers of building hand percussion. Each track is a respective, but the washes of sound/percussion come and go often creating a sense of mot…
Ali Zarin
With the massive amount of material Bryn Jones had left in the vaults when he passed away in 1999, it's hard to truly assess his progression, stylistic or otherwise, over the years. And his reasons for choosing to release one tape's worth of material over another's were sometimes as mysterious as anything else about his work as Muslimgauze. But upon stumbling onto the material found on the undated tape known as Ali Zarin, it's hard not to wonder how it would have been received if it had bee…
Libya Tour Guide
Limited edition of 500. Originally issued as the third LP in the limited-edition Tandoori Dog box set (1998), Libya Tour Guide is reissued here as a standalone CD following corresponding editions of the box's first two discs, Jaagheed Zarb (2008) and Tandoor Dog (ARCHIVE 013CD, 2013), and again the increased space of the CD medium has allowed for the inclusion of previously unreleased material from the original tape. Although a version of "Rebiana sand sea" originally surfaced on the 1998 Mel…
Abyssinia Selasie
Limited edition of 500. Although Bryn Jones's work as Muslimgauze certainly counts dub among its influences, rarely is that influence treated as directly or centrally as it is on many of the tracks found on Abyssinia Selasie. A rarity among the material Jones left behind after his death in 1999, this release features previously unreleased material that Jones had titled, unlike many of the tapes he had submitted but hadn't gotten around to preparing for release. The opening title-track alon…
Izlamaphobia
Edition of 500. Izlamaphobia starts with an aggressive blast, "Hudood ordinance." With a rhythm track consisting of extremely tweaked and processed electronic beats and bleeps and only the gentlest of Arabic string instruments deep in the mix to relate things to a more familiar Muslimgauze sound, the song sets the general mood for the rest of Izlamaphobia. This said, Bryn Jones's specific talent was such that even without that, this would still sound like him, his trademark care and obses…