★Staalplaat
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…
Uzbekistani Bizzare and Souk
Sonically, Bryn Jones's work as Muslimgauze often pulled in two directions at the same time. The one, towards what fans of Can might call an "ethnographic" kind of practice, especially with his use of vocal samples and percussion instruments from the Middle East and other regions of the world Jones was so interested in (obsessed by?). The other is toward, for lack of more polite phrasing, harshly fucked-up digital noise and beats. Many interesting Muslimgauze releases tend more toward that …
Drugsherpa
The provenance of bonus tracks can often be tangential or suspicious; in this case, it's more like a homecoming. WhenBryn Jones turned in the master for what would become 1994's Drugsherpa mini-CD, Staalplaat selected the 20-minute title-track, truly one of Muslimgauze's most distinct and awe-inspiring tracks, to fill the release. The sinuous, doom-haunted "Drugsherpa" still sounds fresh today, but in 1994 it was so far ahead of its time, that the rest of us wouldn't catch up until a decade or m…
Turkish Berlina
Some might say that the continued stream of releases fromBryn Jones aka Muslimgauze is beginning to beggar belief. But Jones was always prolific, creating not just song after song but variant version after version of his existing work. And so Muslimgauze continues to reach out from the last century into this one. Although an intensely dedicated and creative producer and composer, Jones could be a little cryptic when it came to keeping his massive body of work organized. The recently unearthed Tu…
Un-used Re-mix's 1994-1995
"We do not work on a release, a piece is done at a time. A CD is drawn from various tracks which can span a few days, weeks or a month, or a day, each release is different." --Bryn Jones, Grinding Into Emptiness interview, 1998Not only has Muslimgauze's work survived the death of Bryn Jones, so have his working methods; with so much worthwhile material still in the vaults and much of it having little in the way of information or context left by the artist upon his untimely passing, recent reissu…
Deceiver vol. 3 & 4
The original 2CD Deceiver from 1996 is a seminal release in Bryn Jones' sprawling discography, one of the first major ones to really pivot into the noisier/more abrasive side of Jones' sound as Muslimgauze. From its epic, vinyl-side-long title-track down to terse, rhythmic snippets like "A Parsee View," Deceiver set out many of the avenues that Muslimgauze would continue to explore before Jones' death in 1999. Since then, Staalplaat has continued to release the massive back-log of Jones' work,…
Minaret Speaker
While the human voice has often been an element in Bryn Jones\' WORK as Muslimgauze, rarely did he highlight it as much as in Minaret Speaker, the latest in the Muslimgauze Archive SERIES, and its concurrent release, Feel the Hiss(ARCHIVE 030CD). While elements of Minaret Speakerappeared on the 7\" of the same name released by Staalplaat in 1996, much of the strongest material here is previously unheard. Jones\' normal practice was to send in tapes to the label with only a title for each tape as…
Feel the hiss
Some of the tracks on Feel the Hiss, a release Bryn Jonesrecorded LIVE to cassette in early 1995 but never had the chance to remix and polish before he DIED, use the same kinds of devotional voices found on much of Minaret Speaker(ARCHIVE 029CD), but here other voices are present too. Conversational or angry, male or female, English or French or Arabic, almost inaudible or forcing their way to the front of the MUSIC, these "Zilver Tracks" (the name based on a note Jones wrote on the tape) engage…
Mort aux vaches
CD, 3-panel micro-wave carboard cover, pyrography on the front side and hand-stamped inside, ltd. 500ex. Produced and recorded for Dwars@vpro by Berry Kamer, Amsterdam, October 27, 2008.
Mort aux vaches
"For this live-to-air outing, Raphael Lyon’s primary instrument is a customised organ, with which he sketches out simple cyclical themes that suggest either a more rudimentary take on Terry Riley’s Persian Surgery Dervishes or a more involved reworking of Rick Wright’s Eastern-tinged organ mantras on Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma. He adds field recordings and occasional processed vocal incantations. Though modest in ambition, this is impressively concentrated work; its sense of warmth and honesty under…
Dark Market Broadcast
Recorded in Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles. Walpurgisnachet recorded with Joe Potts. Purge recorded live at Anticlub, Los Angeles. Live recording engineered by Joseph Hammer. Mastered by John Duncan at Unormori, Tokyo. The result is a terrific industrial album, rusty, acid and distorted soundscape with a massive use of FM waves and voices recorded along with low frequency sounds.
Mort aux vaches
MINBLOWING EDITION! 'This might very be the first time that Staalplaat repeats a cover for their Mort Aux Vaches: the metallic cover for this one was also used for the Mitchell Akiyama release (unless of course one states that a lot where printed on paper), but with a different pin. Musicwise of course Vernon & Burns are something different than Akiyama. What many perhaps don't know is that perhaps the whole Mort Aux Vaches enterprise started with VPRO and Staalplaat was by asking people to deli…
Mort aux vaches
New Ignatz cd out now on Staalplaat ´Mort Aux Vaches´ series. Live session at Berry Kamer´s Dwars program at VPRO. KRAAK is working on a new Ignatz lp as well, compiling the best tracks of his cassette releases. Will be released after summer...On Friday Ignatz plays at the Kinky Star in Ghent. On May 22nd his new band Beautiful Band plays at the RTT in Brussels with The Psychic Paramount and Das Os. ´Beautiful Band [Laurent of Rot (guitars), Bram Devens of Ignatz (vocals & guitars), Paul Labrequ…
Mort aux vaches
CD, 3-panel engraved sikscreened cover ltd. 500ex. Perhaps I told this before: one sunday afternoon two years I went out to see the farewell event of a band that I never heard of, Dagpauwoog, but I knew all of its members (including Rutger Zuydervelt) and was pleasantly surprised by at least two concerts: soccerCommitee use of voice and guitar blew me away (the female answer to Oren Ambarchi I thought) and Wouter van Veldhoven, who played some analogue synthesizer, a music box, an ancient tape d…
1980-82
A collection of recordings from Spains Esplendor Geométrico recorded between 1980 and 1982. Very much like a spanish Suicide, Esplendor blend soundscapes, industrial noises, vocals and early drum machines to brilliant effect
Bleu
long out of print "In their own way, ETANT DONNÉS perpetuate the very select circle of alchemist image-makers who, like Michel Maïers in his Atatanta Fugiens ou Lambpsrinck in De Lapide Philosophico, drew up allegorically, poetically, and in a way intelligible only to the followers, the various phases of the microcosmic and macrocosmic magistery. "What is at the top is like what is at the bottom, for the miracle of one only thing"Hermes Trismegistus."