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I'm certainly not the first to observe this strange paradox, and I won't be the last, but it seems that the release schedule of new Muslimgauze albums has somehow increased exponentially since the death of Bryn Jones. Every month since Jones' untimely passing has brought at least one new release to his already preposterous discography, often two or three. At this stage, I'm actually having a hard time believing that even the absurdly prolific Bryn Jones committed this much unreleased material to tape before his demise. By this point, Gauze might actually have crossed that Biggie Smalls milestone, having released more albums posthumously than those released during his life. I have to admit however, perusing the newly released 77-minute Alms For Iraq on Soleilmoon, it's hard to say who else could have produced this music other than the singular Muslimgauze.Soleilmoon
Multiple tracks of sampled rhythms abruptly explode out of nowhere, spraying violent distortion across layers of interwoven samples of Arabic music. Scattershot, sweltering tabla rhythms are suddenly phased and mutated across the stereo channels, with moments of arrhythmic hiccupping and digital blurring maintaining a consistently aggressive, intense atmosphere. "Pale Elegant Egyptian" sounds like something Coil might have recorded for Horse Rotorvator, a mysterious Nubian folk loop matched with a pounding, hashish-filtered industrial rhythm. For most of the album, the dials are turned all the way up in an effort to push the distortion into the red zone, so many of the beats converge into a thick amorphous cloud of smoke. Dub techniques are utilized in unique ways, quiet passages that serve as the quiet before the storm, giving way to machine gun rhythms and fiery distortion. For those masochistic enough to be Gauze completists, the quality of the music on this disc is pretty much irrelevant: no doubt you've already purchased this. For those who enjoy only the occasional dip into this artists' imposing catalog, however, I can guardedly recommend Alms For Iraq as one of the better examples of late-period Muslimgauze. One thing that stands out about this release is the packaging: a tall cardboard wallet with six panels of disturbing images culled from alternative media websites dedicated to publicizing the ongoing atrocities in Iraq and Palestine. It's well-known that Bryn Jones was deeply moved by the plight of the disenfranchised Palestinians, and I would further conjecture that he felt his music could serve as audio terrorism, a series of violent missives to spread a message of an oppressed group of people. The cover image shows bare Arabic feet above a pair of sandals bearing the words "ISRAEL" and "USA." To the uninitiated, this might seem like a plea for tolerance and unity, until you realize that for Arabs, anything that touches the bottom of their feet is vile and unclean. One thing that Israel and the Western allies seem unable or unwilling to understand is that the "war on terrorism" will never be won. Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease itself. Anyone at the CDC would agree that the cause of an epidemic must be attacked, not its symptoms. Terrorism is the last brutal resort of a people who have no other voice, but refuse to surrender.
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Those expecting Black Dice to travel further in the trajectory suggested by the beat-infused abrasiveness of Cone Toaster will no doubt be disappointed by Miles of Smiles. Black Dice's newest 12" on DFA is not very similar to the material on the aforementioned EP, and it doesn't share much in common with the blissful psychedelic clamor of their Beaches and Canyons album, either. It's something else entirely, an unexpected tangent into the realm of sampling and tape music.
Both tracks appear to have been constructed by meticulous editing, like so many avant-garde tape collages. However, the effect is decidedly less academic than many works of concrete music. Miles of Smiles hits me on a visceral level; an urgent, intuitive drama that decisively pushes forward. Side A opens with the insistent chirping of crickets joined by a cacophony of looped voices and structured clouds of noise. Muffled beneath this dark fog of noise are pounding Japanese tribal rhythms. I am suddenly lifted onto a circulating jet stream of fluttering electronics, before being violently torn back by a jagged edit, pulling me into a surreal, stereophonic audio environment. Someone is shaking a rain stick, a bag of runes or a handful of mosaic tiles. It's a shamanistic invocation that sets the stage for the sudden explosion of nervous percussion and ethnic, vaguely Arabic swirls of sound. Side B is "Trip Dude Delay," a study in industrial exotica, a shrill piercing tone which gives way to stacks of mutated voices, gently coaxed and sculptured. A left turn into psychedelia sees the track dropped into a chasm of echo, a cubist hall-of-mirrors that refracts the abstraction into semi-clarity. I am suddenly caught up in a giant, cresting tsunami of noise, an adrenaline rush of forceful wind accompanied by a roll of thunder. I am swept along, riding through apexes and nadirs of sound, feeling the tension of nature's senseless brutality. Finally, I'm dumped off on a tropical island, where whacked-out Boredoms-style percussion and strangled birdsong fill the crisp, sparkling ocean air. Not unlike its photo-collage cover art, Miles of Smiles is a highly structured mosaic, yet it remains willfully disorganized, vital and surprising.
samples:
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