STAALPLAAT - Forced Exposure

$26.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 5/24/2024

Separated from both its reputation and its sleeve art, the music of Muslimgauze explores the relationship of visual sensations -- space, color, depth, illusion -- to the listening experience. The music on Maroon is dub-like inspired techno music, laid back with voices appearing randomly in the mix. The thick drums and rich found sounds that densely populate the soundscapes on Maroon give materiality to the warm presence of the synth washes. The music is so layered and textured that it ceases to be aural and exists almost solely in the realm of sight and touch. Devoid of reference to any external reality, Muslimgauze's ambience gets remolded by subjective experience and moved around in the memory. By shifting the quality of perception with the producer's sleight of hand, Bryn Jones (the Mancunian behind Muslimgauze) makes explicit the interiority of the senses. Divorcing Muslimgauze's music from its image is like listening to Take That without seeing Robbie's pelvis or Mark's pouting. This is precisely why the music is so effective. Relocating music's power within the listener instead of as an external force acting upon the listener forces reappraisal and reinterpretation. The muezzin's wailing call to prayer and the shrieks of women mourning the dead conjure up images of a fierce "death-to-the-infidels" fervor in the Western imagination, and are recast as holy prayers for the ultimate, womb-like peace that most ambient music aims to express. The usually easy exoticism of sampled tablas and ouds instead hint at the dread on the road to the water-colored bliss of run-of-the-mill ambient and force the listener to internalize difference and confront the received images of Islam that Muslimgauze detour by such strong powers of suggestion.

$15.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 5/3/2024

Bryn Jones' work was justly known for its excess -- of tracks created, of rhetoric, of volume levels, of repetition, of length -- and the sometimes-indiscriminate way he produced material as Muslimgauze carried over into his approach to the part of the business that involved getting people to actually hear his music. Known for the deluge of DATs he'd share with the labels he worked with, Jones also didn't necessarily restrict himself to just one outlet. Very early in his career, in the same year the first two Muslimgauze LPs came out (1983), Jones released an obscure 7" single with completely blank black sleeve art on a label called Hessian. Hammer & Sickle is to date the only release on Hessian (which may have just been Jones himself?). Those two LPs, Kabul and Opaques, are fascinating in the context of the full swath of Jones' work. They're much spacier, more drifting, and notably less interested in using the kind of Middle Eastern percussion and other instrumentation that's such a distinct element on many Muslimgauze releases. Hammer & Sickle operates in a similar territory, but if anything, a little further out from the main body of Jones' work. The side-long title track and the three B-sides here are all cut from the same cloth, spacious productions that mainly play rounded synth percussion against echoing, "bag of wire"-style dub hits. After the lengthy examination of Hammer & Sickle itself, the other three cuts experiment with altering pitch, duration, tempo, and other elements as if testing the ways Jones could vary the effects of the title track without ever ditching its component parts. His sound was already quickly evolving (even the next year's Buddhist on Fire is closer to what fans likely picture when they think of the "Muslimgauze sound"), leaving Hammer & Sickle an intriguing and valuable portrait of one of Jones' early side investigations.

$28.50 LOW STOCK LEVEL

Kashmiri Queens 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 12" 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 style in one track, adopting a floating, ambient-like approach. While the music maintains a strong percussive quality, vocals make only occasional appearances throughout the tracks. It marks a departure from the artist's previous abrupt transitions, favoring a more concentrated and steady approach to the music. Sounds are allowed to linger for extended durations, providing a deeper listening experience. The beats take a backseat this time, although they remain a significant part of the musical tapestry. Notably, track nine is completely beatless, showcasing the artist's ability to create dramatic and twisted sonic landscapes with looped and distorted vocal excerpts. The tracks featured on Kashmiri Queens maintain a clean and polished sound, allowing the instrumentation and composition to shine. The third track weaves together drums, bells, a female singer, and enigmatic extended tones to create a compelling sonic journey. Track four introduces a drum-loop with a sussurus element and a backwards orchestral loop, culminating in an unexpected rhythm shift. Track ten employs a metallic tapping loop as its foundation, creating a distinctive rhythm in collaboration with the tabla. It also incorporates elements of strings, offering a dynamic soundscape reminiscent of early Muslimgauze work. The penultimate track is a moody and minimal masterpiece that plays with layers of metal loops, tabla, and zither, demonstrating the artist's innovative approach. In summary, Kashmiri Queens is an impressive addition to the Muslimgauze discography, staying true to their signature sound while introducing distinct elements that make it a must-have for fans of their work.

$21.50 IN STOCK

From 1985, the beginning of their collaboration in Amsterdam, Peter Bosch and Simone Simons have been involved in performances, concerts and theater 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. "The Krachtgever" is their best-known piece for its Golden Nica, received at Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, 1998. The other projects on the LP are "Cantan un Huevo", commissioned by the Ives Ensemble in 2000 and awarded in 2002 at the 29th edition of the International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art, Bourges, France, and one of their first installations, "Was der Wind zum Klingen bringt", from 1989/90, shown in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1990, as part of the exhibition "Energieën", and in 1991 at the Multimediale 2, Z.K.M., Karlsruhe. The LP demonstrates that sound produced by the Bosch and Simons music machines can also be listened to as autonomous "music".

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The first complete version of Eye For An Eye, including the two unreleased tracks "Sub Cahra pt1" and "Sub Cahra pt2" that were not on the first vinyl release. Eye For An Eye sounds very much like Muslimgauze material from 1993 (Salaam Alekum Bastard, Veiled Sisters). Much more laid back than their later output, it could be the best era of Muslimgauze. This one, like most of their others sounds dark, dirty, and hot. It was recorded as a direct follow up to Betrayal, with which this release shares common musical ground. Recorded right after the PLO signed a peace treaty with Israel, which still hasn't become effective. Much sameness exists along the lines of "Betrayal" throughout the catalog, and some rare, pricey items that suffer from sameness, such as "Maroon". What Bryn did in the mix is interesting; the cascading echoing keyboard and string, perhaps played by synths, is timeless in a place of cascading, crystalline vortices. It's all in the mix. This record makes an adventure of the sameness, breaks it all down, and turns it into texture-fields of tactile melodic density. The timeliness of the title and the current world situation.

$19.00 IN STOCK

"Jens Brand 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, sculptural, yet invisible presence. It might happen that the body of a person moving around in the audience has more impact on the sound then the variations produced by instruments themselves. 'I was always interested in the idea of making acoustic music that has the quality of electronic music,' muses Dortmund based musician and visual artist Jens Brand. 'Electronic music is fantastic, but I don't like speakers very much.' Take his performance entitled 'Motors And Styrofoam'. Pieces of glistening white Styrofoam fitted with small motors hang from the ceiling above the audience's heads, squatting balefully in mid-air like lopsided clouds. Acting as a resonator, the Styrofoam amplifies the whirr of the motors, which builds up into a loud, persistent drone overlaid with overtones. Equally uncompromising is 'The Ratchets', which deploys a number of football rattles, those small wooden devices originally used by hunters. The ratchets are set in motion by motors whose speed and direction are controlled by a computer: they click busily away, producing a dense, enveloping sound reminiscent of heavy rainfall. In performance, the sound of the ratchets is spellbinding in its rawness and intensity, attaining impressive volumes as it interacts with the features of the space." --Rahma Khazam, The Wire Recorded and edited by Radboud Mens at Galerie Weisser Elefant, 2022. 180 gram vinyl, 300 copies.

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The relationship between Bryn Jones's music as Muslimgauze and the track/album titles he would provide (sometimes right on the tapes he would send in for release, but often determined later, sometimes even giving two different pieces months apart the same title, accidentally or not) has always been a little mysterious. Jones himself can no longer be asked, and as you continue to investigate the swathes of material he provided, you hit sources like the DAT or DATs that make up the contents of the new double-LP Turn On Arab American Radio. Nine tracks, the first LP/four tracks titled "Turn On Arab American Radio," and the other LP/five tracks labeled only "Arab American Radio." None of them sound particularly radio-esque, although given the simultaneous vastness and ornate focus of Jones's Muslimgauze work that gap between name and sound is far from atypical. Instead, here the de rigeur percussion loops that underpin this particular set of tracks, while occasionally clipping into the fierce distortion that Jones either loved to use or couldn't get away from, steer away from both the more consistent application of that distortion as well as the Middle Eastern and Asian influences he often used. It'd be a stretch to call anything here basic boom-bap production but they come closer to it than a lot of Muslimgauze production. And while those loops are, as always prominent, they're not actually the focus; settling into steady vamps as structures for Jones to pursue an extended and often more gentle exploration of the other sample sources he has here. There are stringed instruments, the sound of water, but most prominently or strikingly the human voice. Nothing is in English but tone and the occasional word ("familia", "passport") still provide guides. There are ululations, snatches of melody; but most often speech, dialogue, often tense and harried sounding. Is this what Jones was thinking of or referring to with his Arab American Radio? As with so many other questions about Muslimgauze, we'll never know the answer to that one. (Most pertinently in this case we might wonder who appears here, and what the context of these recordings is. But Jones never provided that with his submissions.) Here, even though those inexorable loops pound on, indefatigable, that emphasis on some of the people Jones chooses lends a measured gentleness to much of Turn On Arab American Radio, at least within the context of his body of work.

$38.50 IN STOCK

Remastered reissue of Het Zweet (1987), including bonus LP consisting of previously unreleased material. Marien Van Oers work under the name Het Zweet ("The Sweat" in English) originally came out in the 1980s (specifically 1983-1988), but listening to the new reissue of this self-titled album from 1987 can feel like one is listening to something that's both much more current and also much, much older than that. Van Oers, who passed away in 2013, made music that tended to get classed as "industrial", and tracks here like the steady, clanging churn of "From The Lowland" or "On Earth" show why, but he was as or more inspired by tribal music intended to produce trance-like effects via rhythm and (percussive and vocal) repetition. Using instruments made by himself out of anything from shopping carts to cardboard tubes, the music of Het Zweet locks into grooves that somehow feel more elemental and physical than many of his contemporaries. It never quite feels like Van Oers is emulating or echoing the music of any particular region or tradition so much as trying to synthesize all the ones he's heard into some sort of ur-pulse, an overtone so powerful as to compel the "Massive Trance" the title of the last song on the record evokes. While the 1987 Het Zweet has four track titles per side, and on listening you can discern some segues and places where it feels like new movements do shift into place, it's fitting to have this record on vinyl where the listener is encouraged to experience each side as one uninterrupted piece. The bonus material included on this reissue expands Het Zweet from one LP to two, the second LP consisting entirely of previously unreleased material. This bonus LP is sequenced similarly, with three untitled tracks and two live excerpts presented as side-long experiences that belie their disparate origins with a unity of sound and purpose. Van Oers' percussive nous and distantly yelled chants certainly sound capable of working up a sweat in both the performer and any movement-minded listeners, but maybe the most striking thing about Het Zweet is how vital it still sounds, despite its age and relative obscurity.

$40.00 IN STOCK

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. It's a formula used many times in the past by Jones, yet somehow he still manages to keep things just fresh enough, investing songs like the first and second "Khalifate" and especially both slamming versions of "Imad Akel" with enough unexpected touches. He incorporates the basic power of his work in the tracks as well, with both beauty and a nervy, hard-to-define tension as the songs progress. The sound palette of Muhammadunize is very similar to his ambient-techno albums such as Mullah Said and Gun Aramaic, down to the rhythms and the trademark tanpura drones and keys in C minor. The difference is that it's a bit more aggressive and faster-paced than the aforementioned albums, thus utilizing a similar dark atmosphere to a more immediate and in-your-face effect, especially as noted by the drum-kit urban-sounding pulse of "Imad Akel", one of the high points on this album. However, a favorite track here is the closer "Fatah Guerrilla" (also title track of the whole triple album), featuring a rapid echoed rhythm along with a barrage of percussion popping up and echoing every so often, sounding like they're flying through the room at a quick pace; the piece also features a beautiful flute melody which combines with the busy rhythm section in an interesting way.

$14.50 IN STOCK

"Bells": In this unmanipulated recording, a performance of the bells of the Transfiguration Cathedral Spaso-Efimeyev Monastery in Suzdal takes place. Suzdal is one of the towns on the best-known tourist route in Russia, called the "Golden Ring". "Cicadas": An annual brood of cicadas creates a dense sonic atmosphere from their treetop feeding zone, here recorded on a hot July afternoon in a forest near Lake Lisi, on a plateau overlooking the Saburtalo district of Tbilisi. The project (nula.cc) is the brainchild of intermedia artist Lloyd Dunn, a founding member of the Tape-Beatles, and editor and publisher of the zines "PhotoStatic" and "Retrofuturism". It comprises hours of sound works, hundreds of photographs, travelogue essays, and similar digital artifacts, which often reflect the artist's frequent travels and esthetic thinking.

$34.50 NOT IN STOCK

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 with, often in totally different configurations, is now a permanent mystery, but it does lead to Jackal The Invizible, essentially a compilation of material from multiple other releases that Jones had also submitted at the time on its own DAT. All of the songs here were released at least 20 years ago (a few over 30) and as with practically all Muslimgauze releases they were limited and/or hard to get ahold of now. Jackal The Invizible is both a way to issue those tracks on vinyl as the Archive series has been consistently doing, and in interesting look into how Jones would organize and sequence his albums. The track listing here was faithfully reproduced from the way Jones titled these tracks on this submission, which is how you get Fedayeen's "Bharboo of Pakistan Railways" here called "Fedayeen Bharboo of Pakistan Railways 2001". This compilation as with most of his work was submitted without comment, so it can be asked, was it intended to be a compilation? Had he at some point decided he preferred these tracks in this arrangement rather than on their other tapes? Did he produce so much work and/or was so disorganized he simply forgot this batch had been mailed off before? Did he have a standing arrangement with his postal worker and just handed him whatever was closest to the door each week? The new juxtapositions can be quite striking; shifting suddenly from the harshly distorted blurts of "Resume and Shaduf Fatah Guerrilla 1999" to the cooly nocturnal atmosphere of "Abu Nidal 1987" and then to the dubby bass pulses and rattling hand percussion of "Hand of Fatima 1999" is an experience unlike much else in Jones' oeuvre, even though all three modes are ones he has worked in before. Engineered and mixed by J. Delf. Mastering by Rinus Hooning. Edition of 700.

$22.50 IN STOCK

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 two new tracks updating the themes of the original material. Having forged out a unique path in music for many years this is a means by which to view the genesis of what would become "Radboud Mens music". Side A comprises the original Sine which is considered a minor masterpiece of the early 2000s click dub electronica. "Funkenkammer" launches proceedings through a measured gathering of elements; buzzes and hums traverse the rhythmic spikes that punctuate throughout. Already at this starting post one can acknowledge machine music with a human pulse. Machines lurch and growl gently amongst a tiny ping pong pulse on the next track "Steel". "Moi" attaches itself to the subconscious with its dizzying sinewy highs and bare bone bass shadowing an equal love for dub processes and experimental forms. With "Metal/Dub/Plate" a dark drone anchors the mischievous random play on the surface whilst "For Da" presents light clicks and woozy atmosphere. Here we enter the new chapter in the story of Sine. Radboud works on music that binds disparate forms together into one sound, as a result these new tracks incorporate all styles witnessed in the original, retaining the clicks and cuts mentality whilst incorporating a deeper ambient drone approach with a minimal dub influence sweeping throughout. Tape shifts gears into a deep haunted world consisting of a skittering beat and a repetitive melodic cloud of sound. Condition takes the experimental dub further into space leading into a remix if his own track "Circle of Fifths" which wraps up the release with an uplifting conclusion where ascension takes hold. Equally unnerving and enticing the original and updated Sine fit firmly together as a unique whole bringing together a sparse assured sound carefully crafted to ignite a transcendental mood in the listener. Color vinyl in special packaging; edition of 400.

$18.00 IN STOCK

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, sometimes extremely creative, of human interactions, data, sounds, and technologies, are recurring in the works of Suisalu, whose subjective perspective unconventionally investigates different social and cultural phenomena. He is always attracted by the different forms of technologies. It can be an old seismograph he reconstructs to record the underground vibrations of a volcano, or, it can be some 3D models he uses to analyze a grain of soil coming from the ancient Pompei. The results of the researches would lead to the installations. The whole set of data is often the premise of a narration, a datafiction, as in the case of the signals recorded from some abandoned satellites, who are later presented with a speed set by the position of other satellites gravitating above the gallery hosting the event. Noisephony of Lawn Mowers was originally composed in 2013, but it was unreleased until now, when Staalplaat, a fundamental label for its unusual experimental connections and for the sound events performed in unconventional spaces, decided to publish it. It's a score for lawnmowers, whose making is given to a conductor and executed by a group of artists. Suisalu reminds us that historically, lawn has been a symbol of power and wealth as it required substantial upkeep and unused land. Today, it still indicates wealth, but is mainly maintained by the owners themselves. This puts us in a schizophrenic situation where we strive to be privileged by taking the role of the servants. "Silver Meets Ted" is the other track included in the selection. It's a recording of over ten minutes, whose trend cryptically moves on and with some unsettling minimal tolls, always more metallic. Some deaf beats follow, and then we have a splash of water and some slightly hinted neighs, chirps, different spills of liquid, more intense and measured, clackings and vibrations, some hardly identifiable frequencies and again a series of punctuated metal bells. The work by Taavi Suisalu stands out as a calibrated combination of mathematical coherence and elements of surprise, automatized and causal processes, some small oblique utopias, that work well together by improving highly subjective resources and create some slightly unsettling final results. 10" single; edition of 300.

$18.00 IN STOCK

Old, but still functioning computers are simply scrapped, made redundant and without remorse left to corrosion and an existence without a task and no perspective. That this doesn't need to be so, and that even computers with limited storage capacity can still take on a function in society, is illustrated by Alexei Shulgin's outdated 386, now serving as a musician. Performing classic rock's biggest smash hits! The Clash! The Doors! The Sex Pistols! Hendrix! and more... gone digital, gone to 8-bit computerized chip-music with a singing computer, with all the charm available to a text-to-speech-program. Created by Russian artist Alexei Shulgin, 386 DX was "the world's first cyberpunk band." Known for its live performances on city streets and in nightclubs, the performer is a dingy, singing PC that runs Windows 3.1, equipped with a vintage sound card and loaded with MIDI files of drums, guitar, and synth and accompanying lyrics. The ironic comment delivered by Shulgin and his singing computer is well within the context of the performances by the 386 DX rock band, with which he "toured" Europe in 1998 and performed on nearly 60 occasions. This one-man-one-computer-show was based on a similar idea as his current installation: Shulgin presented himself as a performer carrying a keyboard, and by simply hitting a key elicited the text-to-speech singing, accompanied by very simple music and a few '70s-style visual effects. Alexei Shulgin simply is the "King of Cyberpop". Previously (partly) released on CD. Edition of 300.

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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 contrasting radically with the eerie sounds from organic noise, distortions, and minimal jams. The opening track "Medina Flight" bangs on with a metallic sounding looped drum track that blares with distortion at some points while background voices chant out vocals nearly throughout. The track is flavored with other harsh sounds and even a few woodwind sounding instruments before subsequently breaking down and starting back in several times. "Believers Of The Blind Sheikh" is a ten-minute Middle-Eastern sounding dub track sprinkled with live drum sounds and more occasional vocal samples of unknown conversation. "Saddams Children" leans more toward traditional instruments, but one can hear the gurgle of electronics lightly in the background. The instrumentation of the album is amazing. Narcotic is a solid piece of work that covers quite a chunk of the electronic music spectrum, although a lot of the rhythms tend to fall on a little harder side. It manages to blend ethnic and electronic sounds into quite an interesting mix. The images of a surrealistic desert land inhabited by the bizarre and general strangeness abounds in between the strong rhythm usage and cinematic atmosphere unbound, subsequently the decisive progression from the album increases this sensation. The listener easily gets submerged into this opium like state, succinctly guided by the beats and echoes from oriental sounds that wander in and out of the speakers and far away and so close from the mind. Interesting and attractive the album keeps a middle ground status, half experimental and other half adapted for the tribal and linear structure common to Muslimgauze, the listener will find quite another of the many faces of this enigmatic artist. The D side contains two bonus tracks taken from the Iran CD. Recorded, engineered, mixed by: John Delf. Previously released as CD.

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Long-time Muslimgauze fans with keen eyes and/or photographic memories may immediately notice something about the newly unearthed Sadaam's 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 Sadaam's Children actually sound like sparse, clean string sounds of Narcotic's "Saddam's Children", three of them never previously heard extended versions of tracks previously found on that release -- well, one is both an extended and truncated version, but such are the idiosyncrasies and joys of the ever-complex Muslimgauze oeuvre. That extra-special track is the mighty, dubbed-out "Gulf Between Us", which does appear on Narcotic as a brief palate cleanser but in the same year was also released by Staalplaat as a standalone track in its ultimate, 23-minute form. That sprawling version takes a rather circuitous route as subtle electronic elements wear away at the track; the more compact ten-minute version here instead dials up the bass wobble for a track that's about as chilled as Muslimgauze ever gets. "Believers of the Blind Sheik" and "Effendi" are slightly more straightforward, in that both are about twice as long as their Narcotic excerpts, with the former's echoing drum hits and quiet pulse proving to be a natural fit with "Gulf Between Us" at the beginning of the release and the even sparser, slower building version of the latter seeing the album out in slightly abstract fashion. Before that track, however, there's the previously unreleased and similarly lengthy (at nearly 17 minutes) "Trikrit Brotherhood Quartet", the only track of the four here to get more of Jones' traditional layers of instrumentation and distortion to form a track that seems to shimmer in the summer air like a mirage. As "Trikit Brotherhood Quartet" winds its way from roiling static to more of Jones' classic use of hand percussion it's clear that these extended editions make for another compelling look at Jones' archives and the seemingly infinite flexibility of his muse.

$15.50 LOW STOCK LEVEL

Janet Erskine Stuart said that "Egypt was full of dreams, mysteries, memories". Her music, like her architecture is somehow hardwired into us, more than we know. When Oum Kalthoum was at her zenith, Egyptian music circled the world on shortwave, picked up and marveled over by millions who didn't understand a word she sang but understood the emotion in it. Something different might be said about an astonishing single by Mohamed Mansour, now issued by Staalplaat as a limited edition 7" single. Many will know the words on the first side, because they come from the Eurhythmics song "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This", its glorious, operatic line translated into Arabic as "Ahlamna el Helwa". When the Lebanese singer Mayssa Karaa re-recorded Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" in Arabic for the American Hustle soundtrack, many were reminded that the sheer beauty of the original song went beyond limitations of language. So, it is with Mansour's version of the Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox classic, a soaring line over a universal beat. To make the single doubly special, the flipside is Mansour's reworking of Woody Guthrie's "All You Fascists Bound To Lose", a song that had resonance when it was first performed but which seems ever more relevant today. Mansour's version is called "Hatehhsare", but its message remains the same: evil never prevails for long. Mansour's music is a compelling synthesis of European, American, and Egyptians styles and sounds. It is genuinely international. Just as shortwave radio fans used to twiddle dials to find Oum Kalthoum phasing up and down in the ether, so Mansour's music has a global presence on the internet, but how fine to have it in physical form too, in a beautifully designed sleeve by Staalplaat. Mo is a lyricist, vocalist and physicist from Egypt, Scotland and Kuwait, who has never worked on the 1st of May. Hand screen-printed cover in black and gold, hand sewn.

$33.00 NOT IN STOCK

The excellent Black September, a continuous, five-part, 68-minute epic, is as formidably competent as ever, although more for the brooding, surreal nature of its soundworld than for its grooves, which here sound almost subsidiary. The soul samples and restlessly evolving minor-chord kaleidoscopes that unfold throughout the work is prima facie evidence of a musician on a roll. Boldly named after one of the most notorious Palestinian terrorist organizations, the group which carried out the Israeli Olympic athlete massacre in 1972, September matches its dark black artwork and design with equally doom-laden music (mastered as one track, despite the five separate song titles listed on the back). The title-track relies on a slightly more gentle ominousness, with soft string-plucking reverberating around the beat, but things start to pick up accordingly with the more aggressive, sharp-edged electronics shading into a tense blend of percussion and energy on "Libya"; after shading away into a more minimal midsection, the track returns at a nervous, quick pace, with drums and drum pads firing off echoes into the mix as drones snake in and out of the song. One particularly gripping section has shards of noise firing off in all directions before settling back into the frazzled energy of the central beat, feeling like a soundtrack to a particularly good chase scene in a movie. "Thuggee" and its accompanying remix keep the unsettled edge up, with sudden drum and electronic pulse intrusions erupting over the main flow of the songs. It's interesting to hear how Bryn Jones's love of dub applies itself in even more creative and different ways than from his productions of some years before, exchanging the slow pace for a fast one and applying krautrock drone principles. A nicely stretched-out, creepy remix of Gun Aramaic's "Opiate and Mullah" wraps up this fine effort. This vinyl includes the two unused Return Of Black September tracks that were on the archive series volume 32 CD. The two extra tracks, however, follow in taking a much more cleanly digital feel, with many of the elements Jones usually uses present but in more stripped down or even mechanized forms. The relatively clean pulse of these two longer compositions serve as a refreshing contrast. Edition of 700.

$31.00 IN STOCK

Architect John Körmeling and maverick musician Charlemagne Palestine collaborate on a whole new system of music. 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 public spaces like the "Happy Street" which served as the Dutch pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010, and the "Straight Road" artwork which played with the mismatch between the curvature of the earth and our need to see life in two dimensions, Körmeling has devised a system of music that sets aside familiar Western tuning and is based instead on square roots, areas, and volumes. In order to realize this music, he turned back to the harpsichord and adapted its jangling sound to an intonation that literally plays Pythagorean ratios. Körmeling made it possible to hear ratios and proportions that we usually only encounter on the pages of a math book. Körmeling now had his instrument, but who would have the imagination and vision to play it. He turned to the veteran rule-breaker Charlemagne Palestine, pioneer of long-form improvisations on harpsichord, harmonium, and other neglected keyboard instruments. The idea of "playing a triangle" immediately appealed. Responding to the invitation from Körmeling, he said that "thiss Pythagoriann harpsichordd was just upp myy alley,,,,,,,,,". Palestine saw the new instrument and named it the Frogsichord after its color. This record documents performances on the Frogsichord made in Brussels, Rotterdam and in Cappadocia, Turkey. The sound is strange, perhaps even estranging, but Palestine has made it his own, and created a music that is rich and detailed, not simply "exotic". It's no longer a question of Western tonality colliding with non-European harmonic systems. Here is music that taps into the universal language of mathematics.

$38.50 IN STOCK

Double LP version. Limited fur cover edition (color varies). Architect John Körmeling and maverick musician Charlemagne Palestine collaborate on a whole new system of music. 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 public spaces like the "Happy Street" which served as the Dutch pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010, and the "Straight Road" artwork which played with the mismatch between the curvature of the earth and our need to see life in two dimensions, Körmeling has devised a system of music that sets aside familiar Western tuning and is based instead on square roots, areas, and volumes. In order to realize this music, he turned back to the harpsichord and adapted its jangling sound to an intonation that literally plays Pythagorean ratios. Körmeling made it possible to hear ratios and proportions that we usually only encounter on the pages of a math book. Körmeling now had his instrument, but who would have the imagination and vision to play it. He turned to the veteran rule-breaker Charlemagne Palestine, pioneer of long-form improvisations on harpsichord, harmonium, and other neglected keyboard instruments. The idea of "playing a triangle" immediately appealed. Responding to the invitation from Körmeling, he said that "thiss Pythagoriann harpsichordd was just upp myy alley,,,,,,,,,". Palestine saw the new instrument and named it the Frogsichord after its color. This record documents performances on the Frogsichord made in Brussels, Rotterdam and in Cappadocia, Turkey. The sound is strange, perhaps even estranging, but Palestine has made it his own, and created a music that is rich and detailed, not simply "exotic". It's no longer a question of Western tonality colliding with non-European harmonic systems. Here is music that taps into the universal language of mathematics.

$22.00 IN STOCK

Dick Verdult, aka Dick el Demasiado, is the Philip K. Dick of multi-disciplinary art, the Moby Dick of "cumbia lunática", and the Charles Dickens of literature and experimental cinema. He first fell in love with cumbia when he heard his nursemaid singing the classic "La pollera colorá". From this moment on, he adopted the genre and reinvented it, in a perpetual degeneration called Cumbia Lunática, twisting up the elements of traditional cumbia, the "cumbia of the mucamas", to create an anarcho-tropical vertebral rhythm, one which supports every moving part. Celulitis Illuminati is the powerful debut of the anarcho-tropical gentleman knight of the abstract, Dick el Demasiado, eight dangerous tracks recorded for the first time on vinyl, songs that, upon listening, will liposuck all that grotesque accumulation of adipose tissue out of buttocks and brain. They interweave an amalgam of South American folklore and the cables of electronic music, the plugged-in Ranqueles indians, as in "Asi Que Los Que Sí" ("So That Those Who Yes") on Side A, surrealist and lugubrious beats, poetry made song and "the dead man's drool is good for painting watercolors", as he sings in "Búho Sin Un Ratón" ("Owl With No Mouse"). Euphony that will abduct you away to a viscous street party with "Son Cosas De Hoy" ("They're Things For Today") and to an eclectic and excessive dimension with "pero bien bweno" ("but very proper"). Side B is pure dynamite: "Mecha flan" ("Pudding Fuse"), "Sábado cultural" ("Cultural Saturday"), and "En la jeta" ("In the face") represent the perfect blend of Lucho Argain (La Sonora Dinamita) and Muslimgauze (Bryn Jones). On top of this, the album includes an as-yet unheard gem, "Llama Mi Abogado" ("Call My Lawyer"), produced by Dick himself and Manuel Schaller, the telepathic mage of the Theremin. When the Dutchman stepped off the boat and onto the block, as well as offering us the TV set, the sculpture of a deranged English woman who devours islands like they were sandwiches, the synthesizer, the sound effect, the African drum, the maracas, the indigenous whistle, he obtained for us the song and the stanza, he provided Staalplaat with the language and the poetry, the truthful, the epic of the ugly. Cellulite for mortals, cumbia lunática for the enlightened ones! Numbered edition of 500.

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Given Bryn Jones's rather slack approach to track titles (both being consistent with and sometimes even just supplying them), it's a bit of a relief to realize that two tracks with the same name are indeed related. In the case of "Arab Jerusalem", which makes up nearly half of the newly-released Lalique Gadaffi Handgrenade, that kinship is immediately apparent even though both tracks are clearly their own experiences. Released as the first track on the Minaret-Spearker picture disc 7" in 1996, "Arab Jeruzalem" (spelling also sometimes being fairly slack) is nearly six minutes of effectively shifting dark ambience, wordless female vocals drifting over the hand percussion, chimes, and static of the track, with eventual conversational loops discussing... something underneath. The end of that version is especially striking for the way the woman's wordless singing starts being sampled in such a way that it overlays the whole track (and, slightly, itself). The almost 24-minute "Arab Jerusalem" here might be called the Deer Hunter version of the same story, building with great patience and many more abstract detours towards what now seems like simultaneously an excerpt and, now, a climax. As with many of Jones' more ambient tracks, the great length just lets it cast its spell more thoroughly and entrancingly. The other three tracks, meanwhile, suggest some of Jones' other work but never evoke them as directly as "Arab Jerusalem". "Jordan River" is nearly as long (a second shy of 20 minutes) but strips out the vocal elements in its predecessor, focusing instead on a more active percussive workout (analog and digital both). The title track of Lalique Gadaffi Handgrenade might bring to mind the title of "Lalique Gadaffi Jar" from Libya Tour Guide, last reissued by Staalplaat in 2015 (ARCHIVE 031CD), but if they're sonically related Jones must have practically melted the other track to get this one. And the closing "Desert Gulag" (like the title track, a much more manageable length than the first two epic tracks here) bears a slight resemblance to "Negev Gulag" from 1996's Fatah Guerrilla, here what was a piercing, repetitive drone is softened and looped over more of Jones' percussion. The result is a well-rounded release that shows off many aspects of Jones' sound as Muslimgauze, while existing (like many of these DAT tapes do) in conversation with much of his previously released work. All tracks written, performed, mixed by Muslimgauze. Recorded, engineered, mixed by John Delf. Unreleased material. Edition of 700.

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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 minutes of insistent digital percussion bouncing the listener back and forth between samples of wailing women's voices and a trebly, blurry little whirr that traces the percussion. It's distinctive enough even among the vast Muslimgauze corpus, but as the continued excavation of DATs Jones submitted to his labels continues, sure enough there's more to that track's story, too. An extended "Kaliskinazure" makes up the second of four tracks on Babylon Is Iraq, although it's been lost to the mists of time whether an outside editor excised the more drifting, less needling coda that makes up the extra six minutes found here, or whether Jones simply submitted both versions of the track at different times. This more complete version of "Kaliskinazure" is surrounded by shorter tracks, with the opening "Kaliskinazure _ Momada" sounding not very much like either track it references (instead being a barely-there wisp of far-away sampled wind instruments and what sounds like treated cymbal sounds) and the title track constantly coming to a full, roiling digital boil. The lengthy "Momada" closes out the album with a different, more tersely internal arrangement surrounding the same percussion pattern that will be familiar to any Sonderangebot fans, although the way the quieter atmosphere transforms the feeling of that rhythm indicates once more than Jones's way of reconfiguring his pieces over and over was perhaps more purposive and even more effective than he's sometimes given credit for. The result is a fascinating expansion on one of Muslimgauze's strongest stand-alone moments, as well as a fitting tribute to an artist who would never give you a track if an album would do. such strong powers of suggestion. Cover made of 1mm thick bleu cardboard, sewed, text silver glitter screen-print, black image, name, and side lines are lasercut -- All done by hand! All tracks written, performed, mixed by Muslimgauze. Recorded, engineer, mixed by John Delf. Unreleased material. Edition of 500 (numbered).

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Sound-art converts all kinds of objects, artifacts and places into potential sound producers. Through setups, twisting and staging, the performance is virtually limitless and can also be enriched with selected constraints like the Oulipian literary works. Between performance and installation, sound-art is an in situ experience that takes place on industrial wastelands, natural environments or public spaces. Animated since 2000 by Carlo Crovato, Radboud Mens, Jens Alexander Ewald, and Geert-Jan Hobijn, Staalplaat SoundSystem has organized many ephemeral experiences that only last the time of an exhibition, an event, hence the need to document, to embed the sound of these singular creations. After Composed Nature/Yokomono-Pro in collaboration with Lola Landscape Architects (AM 004LP, 2012), this record is the second "sonic photography" of Staalplaat SoundSystem, which gives an idea of some of its works. As a genuine conductor, on Installations Staalplaat SoundSystem mixes the strident noise of machines, the harrowing sound of sirens, and footsteps and voices, which resonate in the hall. For "Plan C", several sonic worlds follow each other: a little music box, cobbled up from a perforated paper strip; deep and eerie drones; metallic sound streaks synchronized with the light triggered by the faraway echo of the surrounding traffic which reveals the bridge structure; a line of wooden crates whose vibrations develop, increase in power and rumble like a thunderstorm. "Sale Away" has, again, wooden crates anchored to the metallic structure of the building play the role of a resonance chamber. Mixing with this drum-like sound device comes the soft hiss of flutes produced by vacuum cleaners and the purring of fans and radios tuned to 50 Hz. The two excerpts selected for the installation in Nantes give an effect of metallic overvoltage coupled with a mechanical moan. The three other excerpts of "Sale Away" are rougher, if not violent. The impressions of mechanical torsions and distortions, of noises that bang together like in the hold of a ship are more pronounced. In both cases, the spectators play a role, controlling the sources, the sound, with their mobile phone. This underlines even more the peculiar side of the installation according to its setting up. This interaction is in line with the Staalplaat SoundSystem spirit, which asserts itself away from galleries and museums and remains "down-to-earth".

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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, but pulsating with provocative emotions, different from the exotic and ornamental processing of certain world music. Drum machines, old synths, and percussion are all combined in a traditional way, without any computer assistance. "Peace is a distant dream," said Bryn Jones, in one of his last interviews before passing away from a rare blood disease, and on both sizes things seem to unfortunately still be the same. Ingaza is thematically and stylistically all over the place, sporting atmospheric instrumental loops one moment and jarring, heavily barbed and distorted beats the next. Differences between tracks, not unlike changing channels on television or switching between net browsers, predominate, with imagery conjuring Middle Eastern travel and tourism on one screen whilst grisly proxy war footage plays on the next.