STAALPLAAT - Forced Exposure

$22.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 10/8/2021

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 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 10/8/2021

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.

$34.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 7/30/2021

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.

$18.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

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.

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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.

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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).

$15.50 IN STOCK

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.

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Originally issued as the fourth LP in the limited edition box set Tandoori Dog (1998), Jerusalaam follows Jaagheed Zarb, the title disc, and Libya Tour Guide (ARCHIVE 031CD, 2015) with a CD reissue; finally, the long out of print box has been completely reissued. Again the increased space of its new medium has allowed unreleased material from the original tape to be included. This time, however, the extra material is neither alternate versions of Tandoori Dog material nor new songs intended for those releases; the two extra tracks here, clocking in at near 15 minutes and just under eight minutes each, make up unused material from the Return Of Black September sessions (MUSLIM 004CD, 1996). The contrast, even for Muslimgauze who had such a wide range, is stunning. The original Jerusalaam fits in with much of Bryn Jones's classic work, with a heavy emphasis on hand percussion, bass-heavy distortion, sharply clipped loops, and the seething hiss of static. The two otherwise unnamed Return Of Black September tracks, however, follow that album 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 next to the hand- and tape-made feel of tracks like "All The Stolen Land Of Palestine" and "Hessian Bag Of Camel Parts", an invigorating reminder of the breadth and vitality of Jones's work. All tracks written, played and recorded by Muslimgauze. Edition of 700.

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2021 restock. Unsurprisingly for an artist as prolific and strident as Bryn Jones was, the flood of material he sent to labels and compatriots was not always carefully categorized. Also, sometimes he would be so eager to release material that if things weren't happening fast enough, he'd just send in another tape. And that circumstance is why the fascinating oddity Mohammad Ali Jinnah exists. Staalplaat has previously released, in 2002, the Muslimgauze album Sarin Israel Nes Ziona (2002). While continuing to sort through and release the material Jones left behind with his death in 1999, the Mohammad Ali Jinnah tape was found to have significant overlap with that now out of print album, but only to a certain extent. Six of the 15 tracks on Mohammad Ali Jinnah match up with material from the earlier tape (which included 20 tracks), but when Jones resubmitted this tape he also included extended mixes of four of the tracks from the original album ("Imam Fainted", "Yousif Water Pipe Habit", "Opulent Maghrebi Meze", and "Indo Muslem Atlas") as well as five entirely new compositions. The result is a fascinating re-setting of some of the music from that under-heard release. Whether Jones preferred one arrangement to the other is sadly lost information, but listeners now can appreciate a wholly new experience with the material herein, even if some of the material itself has been previously released. And the new tracks are fascinating, even by Jones's usual standards, whether they're the grinding, obsessively focused percussion workouts, "For Larger Iran" and "Burnt Pages Of Ali Jinnah Koran", or the cryptically distant likes of "Cold Turkey". Paired with classic tracks like the bass-distorted, Middle Eastern boom bap of "Kurds Eye View" and the furtively head-nodding "Zahir Din, Cabdriver Of Zind", the result is a release unlike anything else in Jones's discography. All tracks written, played and recorded by Muslimgauze. Edition of 700.

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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 been released during Jones's lifetime. The three-part, 43-minute title-track (the only part of the material to be given a proper title) makes for some of Jones's most relentlessly driving work ever. As soundbites about occupation and Israel float in and out of the mix, a series of crashes and scrapes and a distorted beat contort themselves into shapes and patterns, wearing a cracked, scraping groove into the ground. For almost 22 minutes, the first part of "Ali Zarin" finds frantic beauty in the dense repetition of these elements; when the sounds remain but shift place and emphasis in "Part 2," it's almost shocking. Even more than most Muslimgauze releases, "Ali Zarin" sounds like it could have come out in the mid-'90s and remain equally contemporary. Although "Ali Zarin" could easily stand on its own, that doesn't mean that the rest of the contents of the tape aren't worth sharing as well. These four untitled demos and a brief "Rest Track" sketch show more directions in which Jones might have gone (but didn't, at least based on what has been uncovered so far), especially the prowling late-night ambience and conventional drum kit loop of "Demo-01" and the densely looped bass pulses of "Demo-04." It just serves to confirm the breadth of riches in Jones's archive, and make the listener wonder what else is waiting to be unearthed. Limited edition of 500 -- last copies.

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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 alone, with its steady bassline and dopplering, insistent beeps, is as close to an unadulterated dub track as Jones ever came, even as the separate coda "Benzedrine Wallah" starts cranking up the outbursts of percussion. Not every song on this trim, focused collection goes in that same direction, but even elements like the wobbling percussion and female vocals of "Arab" share a similar sensibility. Even the stark "Mind of a Suicide Bomber" is more coolly menacing than overtly hostile, although as always with Jones's work and his positioning of that work it's hard to know how seriously, or sympathetically, one should take him. Unfortunately Jones isn't around to ask, either to take to task or to praise, but he has left behind such a depth of material (and was so generally taciturn in life) that audiences are left with only that to evaluate. The last track here is titled "Mea Culpa," and while it starts out as a fine example of the warmer, more head-nodding sound of Abyssinia Selasie before metamorphosing into a truly out-there echo chamber, after a brief break in the middle it surges back to life with the dubbiest bassline of the album, bathed in somehow welcoming static. Jones's work as Muslimgauze remains as enigmatic and rewarding as ever.

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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 Melt EP, it is restored to its proper place in this sprawling 22-track CD, along with "Tubruq sand bank" and the 12-minute "Aqua Tingktyur." As with many of Bryn Jones's longer albums as Muslimgauze, Libya Tour Guide ranges over different sounds and modes as it goes, from the near-collage of short pieces featured near the beginning to the subdued, sinister pulsing of "Great satan shadow" to the extended, sometimes digitally shredded journey of "Aqua Tingktyur." Even more than normal, here Jones's tracks comment on each other, with the already hectic squiggles of "Benzedrine, effendi" immediately answered with the fiercer distortions of the same sound on "No, benzedrine, effendi" and "East of tarabulus" taking the listener further than "Tarabulus." The result, whether it's the richly echoing hand percussion of "Kurnel" or the choking static of "Rebiana sand sea," is as intoxicating as always.

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2015 rerelease of the 1995 first release in the Muslimgauze subscription series, with updated artwork. 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 obsessiveness in terms of percussion again evident. With a variety of romanticized (some might say stereotypical) song titles like "The eternal illusionist of oid Bachdad" and "Lahore morphine market," Izlamaphobia has two chief artistic themes, if anything. On the one hand, Jones's incorporation of hip-hop and funk beats was never stronger than on Izlamaphobia, providing songs like "Gilded madrasa" and "The public flogger of Lahore" with a wickedly fierce kick and drive. On the other, the strained, alien treatments on many of the songs would be right at home on innumerable Warp Records releases of the '90s, with squelching rhythms, undanceable dance tracks, and, quite unsurprisingly, a desire to avoid expected techno clichés. With these two strains combined on many songs by Jones, the results are wonderfully slamming, strange tracks such as "Khadija and fereshta." Not everything is quite so dramatically different from other Muslimgauze releases, with the incorporation of multilayered acoustic percussion cropping up more than once, such as on "Hijab muzzle." Everything is just that little bit dirtier in sound, though, and all the more intriguing for it.

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2009 release. Sulaymaniyah is part of Staalplaat's ongoing Muslimgauze archive series. The masters were originally submitted in 1997, then "replaced" by what became Vampire of Tehran, released early in 1998. It was not uncommon for the prolific Bryn Jones to replace masters with what he believed to be a more fit release. Short of two tracks, "Fez Tishan" and "Hamas Pulse of Revenge," this is Vampire of Tehran with nine additional, previously unreleased tracks. Because Sulaymaniyah was "replaced," it was stored in Staalplaat's vaults until its first CD release in 2009, a decade after Jones's passing in 1999, and it will take several more years before Staalplaat has completely caught up with additional "replaced" and unreleased masters. Sulaymaniyah is stylistically varied, with ethno-electro, ethno-breakbeat, and several dub cuts. Ethno-electro/breaks are analogous to urban dance/hip hop, with catchy, distortion-ridden breaks and heavily edited ethnic music, cut up and reassembled into Frankenstein hybrids, sometimes further complicated with dub elements. Wanton mixtures of styles are one of many defining qualities of Muslimgauze music. Like "replaced" masters, versions of tracks such as "Arabs Improved Zpain" and "Arabs Return Zpain" demonstrate Jones's near obsessive search for the right sound. For those who appreciate the later rhythmic ethno-breaks and dub phase of Muslimgauze circa Tandoori Dog, Sulaymaniyah is a must-have. Limited edition of 500.

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2009 release. Part of Staalplaat's ongoing Muslimgauze archive series, Sycophant of Purdah was submitted in 1994 then "replaced" by another master Bryn Jones felt more fit for release. Sycophant then languished in the vaults until its first CD release in 2009, a decade after Jones's passing in 1999. Sycophant opens with a radio broadcast on the ongoing Palestinian crisis set to breakbeats and marmalade-thick bass lines; the forward to another sonic treatise on struggles of the Muslim world. Tracks that follow are more consistent with industrial stylings of the Muslimgauze oeuvre including Zealot (1994), Blue Mosque (1994), Silknoose (1995), and Izlamaphobia (1995). Industrial, in the context of Muslimgauze, is often characterized by tightly woven percussion loops with scant variance while melodies hover. Additionally, tracks like "Radif Avaz and Dastgah" and "Mossad Evil" are another facet of industrial, in the classic sense of the word, meaning "mechanical", "machine-like," with little in the way of melodic overtones. The commonality is rigorous, dogmatic structure that is nonetheless hypnotic and engaging. Because the above albums vary, despite being of the same sub-genre, Sycophant could be considered a "missing link" that ties them together -- with ethno-breaks added for variance. None of the track listings, handwritten by Jones, are repeated on any other release, hence Sycophant of Purdah is a must-have for fans and collectors. Limited edition of 500.

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Some of the tracks on Feel the Hiss, a release Bryn Jones recorded 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 more directly with the world Jones was so fascinated with and tried to represent over and over again in his work as Muslimgauze. If, like most listeners, you only speak one or two languages, the content on Feel the Hiss can be just as inscrutable as anything Jones has put out. But the music, luckily, is also just as wonderful; for a set of demos recorded live to tape, the Feel the Hiss material certainly comes across as fully-formed, if a bit more reflective and synthesizer-heavy than much of his oeuvre. The lengthy "Zilver Track 4," especially, seems at times like a tour around the embattled regions of the world Jones was so passionate about, complete with echoing percussion, voices in various languages, even train sounds. Not that this is Muslimgauze's answer to The KLF's Chill Out, by any stretch of the imagination; the dark, shimmering "Zilver Track 1" is as compellingly propulsive as any of his songs. It's possible that if Jones had gone back to this tape his changes would have brought it more in line with other Muslimgauze releases, but as it is Feel the Hiss is a chance to experience the more contemplative side of his work.

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Originally released in 2003. This is a mostly beat-driven album with little background noise, ambient space, or reverb. There is also no big emphasis on Middle Eastern sounds, which (and you should be figuring this out by now) is a frequently occurring theme in Bryn Jones' politically-driven music. Occasionally, there is some melodic material, or a touch of the Middle East sprinkled in, but it's played down in favor of beats that could best be described as very raw and closer to early Autechre minimalism than something from the World Beat genre. Hiccupping along, distorted break beats sound like they were once made from real drums, but Mr. Jones has turned the gain up way too high and ripped the drums to shreds. Since then, they've been heavily tweaked, turned into glitches, bloops, and blips. A downbeat gets set, only for it to sound like someone hit pause on the CD player. Machine-like loops reminiscent of Krautrock repetitiveness suck me in, only to be shut off without warning. As the beat finally starts to seduce me and I realize I could happily listen to the same repetitive thing for the duration of the CD, the plug gets pulled and the beat is deprived of oxygen just as it finally proved it could "groove." Each title is a page in the Iranair inflight magazine. The title of track 3 comes from a passage of a Sunday Times article (October 4, 1998) about Bin Laden's men infiltrating the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Iranair Inflight Magazine was made towards the end of Bryn Jones' life and in addition to countless others (this man must have recorded about an album a week), has only recently been released for the first time. Record labels were simply not able to keep up with the prolific Jones while he was alive. CD digipack. Limited edition of 700 copies.