The Muslimgauze Preservation Society
Snapping into brutal gear with a slice of brightly-coloured post-dancehall rhythms which wouldn’t sound that far out of place on a record by The Bug, Martyr Shrapnel continues the work of the Muslimgauze Preservation Society of bringing the remaining odds and ends of Bryn Jones‘ extensive and still-increasing back catalogue to posthumous light.
The first six tracks previously appeared as Analog Zikr on cassette, and each is identified by that name and a number. By comparison to a lot of later Muslimgauze releases, there is a relatively mimimalist feel to these pieces, and while this may be because they were unfinished at the time of Jones’ death is irrelevant. With their crackling accretions, conversational Arabic snippets and often furious percussion intervals, the album ripples with all the musical tropes for which Muslimgauze is
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Given a vinyl release nearly two decades after it first appeared – somewhat unusually – as a DAT, Satyajit Eye comprises outtakes from the Vote Hezbollah and Hamas Arc albums. Recorded with engineer John Delf at the Abraham Mosque Centre in Manchester, this album marks a key period in the development of the Muslimgauze sound, as the extensive liner notes on the LP recount, it was the first time Bryn Jones had used a state of the (then) art studio to mix his music.
The début release from the Turquoise Coal label is also Irma Vep‘s first time on vinyl, though it’s also the tenth solo album from Klaus Kinski drummer Edwin Stevens. However, anyone familiar with Klaus Kinski and therefore expecting a full-frontal assault of blistering noise from Stevens will be bound for some disappointment – in fact, a metric shedload thereof.
If there’s any kind of party going on, when the sun’s shining or no, if there’s barbecue coals warming up and a good-sized tent set up for entertainment, cornbread and sweet tea to start, grilled foodstuffs and harder liquor to follow, there should also be The Black Twig Pickers, a turkey in the straw and the ladies hopping high on a “Merry Mountain Hoedown” all the way to Napoleon’s retreat by way of the “Brushy Fork of John’s Creek.”
The Seventies’ favourite candy-coloured California cowboy, Lee Hazlewood stands alongside the likes of Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg in his stature (if not physically) as one of those perennially louche raconteurs of the counterculture whose influence has accumulated and expanded over the passing decades. The throaty baritone, the whiskey and tear-stained sheets, the twang and strum of a full-spectrum pop sound which still managed to be imbued with a quintessence of the stories which the American pop-cultural elite (and they were an elite) told to and about themselves and spread across the wing-collared, bead-fringed world until it became the accepted face of what the Seventies meant to the popular imagination.
Once upon a time, some enterprising music writer came up with (or popularised it at least) the term “arsequake” to describe the sort of heavyweight sludgy rock which occasionally crawled out of Camden to force itself onto unsuspecting grunge audiences in the Nineties; usually talking about the sort of sounds which stepped very close to the definition of music, then trampled on it, bit off its head and relieved itself at great length over the very notions of “listenability” and “form.”
Hands/Birds finds poet John Siddique in shifting moods, one moments or three drifting across textural landscapes, the next commenting, reflecting, proposing. Sometimes, as on the rightously noisy “Hard Paki”, he’s making a blunt statement of presence in the landscape as an integral element therein, defying and defining at the same time. These sentiments are put more reflectively in “Nine Drive”, replacing the chaos and crunch with a journey defined in environmental and electronic sounds and words – “I’ve not seen enough of this city” – a
Once upon a time, a long time ago (but not long in the annals of Britain’s space rock godfathers), a bunch of dishevelled reprobates, part time musicians and full-time dopeheads used to play around with Hawkwind songs, frequently changing the words of “Psychedelic Warlords” to “My name’s Dave/And I’m a good bloke/Got a wife and kids/But I still like a smoke” in a suitably irreverent manner. These people are not connected at all to Mugstar, but somehow it seems an appropriate anecdote to mention in relation to the latter’s Lime album, or at least to its opener “Sunburnt Impedance Machine.” This is because Mugstar make good bloke (though not blokish, or laddish, and not just by or for men) music, redolent of motorbike oil and real ale, of free-flowing beards, freewheeling festivals and squidgy black
Originally released on VHS in 1987, this collection of the Dead Kennedys live in concert and the studio finds them in fine Punk Rock form. As is to be expected, the sound quality of the gig footage (mostly recorded at Mabuhay Gardens 1979-80) is less than optimal, but at least it’s in stereo and captures the band’s tightly-whipped performances in the lo-fi essentials. One simple expedient to improve the viewing experience is of course to turn up the volume. As far as DVD extras go, they’re minimal – song selection, concise biographies for each band member after they called it a day in 1986, and the amusing addition of singalong subtitles for each song. DKs karaoke anyone?
There is an air of finality about the title and contents of 1981-1996. With the dissolution of their musical partnership into separate solo careers, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry are no longer Dead Can Dance, but as the extensive essay on the group included in the luxurious slip-cased hardbacked book (jam-packed with landscape photos) which makes up the packaging of the set observes, the band lives on through its music. However trite that may appear at first – all now-split bands or deceased artists exist beyond their actual personal existence together, barring reunions and the like – somehow it seems even more appropriate when considering Dead Can Dance, who practically embody the idea of timelessness in their uniquely overwhelming sound.
A reasonably well-filled Upstairs At The Garage is in store for a sleazy night of lateral Rock and Roll tonight. Caesar Romero pull off several good sweaty tricks – they use keyboards and guitars like they were meant to be scuzzed up and with a hint of wah; their guitarist manages to wear a stetson onstage without looking like a twat, and their music is a gritty swirl of fat, fuzzy bass, crisp drums and some occasional stroke of violin. Their female fans/friends also like to gyrate in front of the stage. Despite a couple of false attempts on their final number, it stomps their earthy set out with a hint of treble-cut analogue synth Funk and confirms the bands’ entertainment value as high.
From the acid-drenched woodland scenes of the band members lurking in a mirror wilderness on the cover to the music itself, Here Comes The Indian screams and drones and scrawls with psychedelic brightness and insanity. The Animal Collective yell and chant, whip up frenzied percussive grooves from nothing then let them rip into splashes of unhinged harmonious melody – the lysergic force is almost physical, as deliriously fragmented arrangements skip from slow handclap group unconscious singalongs into soundscapes of noises off and murmured words processed from direct from the undergrowth.