Bleep

The Muslimgauze story is one of many twists and turns. The musician Bryn Jones had amassed seemingly endless hours of material in various levels of fidelity that dipped between functional dance, noise and ambient before passing away far too young at 37. Deeply inspired by Middle Eastern conflicts in the 1980s and fervently pro-Palestine, Jones quickly veered off course from his politically agnostic prior work to create music in support of the country. Crafting songs with confrontational titles from bits of oration and traditional Islamic instrumentation, Jones saw the Muslimgauze project as a tool to help spur Palestinian freedom. While only a fraction of the oeuvre trickled out before his untimely death, his posthumous releases have become the stuff of legends: hundreds of tracks have surfaced from the archives via a host of tribute labels. Jones dedicated most of his work under the moniker to the Palestine Liberation Organization, like 1993’s Veiled Sisters LP. The LP’s two sides (Sister One and Sister Two) intended to call attention to the long history of horrors inflicted upon the Palestinian state.

Among his most beloved works, Veiled Sisters contains more rhythmic muscle than most Muslimgauze releases. Side A’s run of ‘Shamal Aquabah’ through ‘Dust’ rides icy post punk guitars and synths alongside some big kick drum thuds, while most of Side F on the back half of Sister Two adds snappy, almost hip-hop worthy snares to those simmering low end workouts to great effect. Psychedelic in practice, but measured in its voicing, Muslimgauze was clearly a project all on its own.