Another set of unique & timeless tracks from the Muslimgauze legacy -

highest recommendations for all frequency-meditators and middle-east-themed dubwise heads out there, another piece in the puzzle of Bryn Jones, with an urgent message for Palestinian liberation, and anti-colonial / western power politics -

with 'Sadaam's Children' most likely being a reference to the approximately 34.000 Palestinians that had to flee their land and ended up in Iraq in 1948 during the first occupation and annexation of their land, with Zionist (and english) politics forcing over 700.000 (around half of the pre-war Palestinian population) into exodus away from Palestine into neighbouring countries as refugees.
The living conditions of exiled Palestinians in Iraq worsened considerably after Sadaam's fall, due to hostile treatment from Shia militants, and around half of the 34.000 have fled Iraq since the Iraq/US war in the early 2000s.


We could go in and explain the sound journey and try shine light on discography-specifics contained within these four pieces - one counting in at 20mins, two at around 15mins, plus a 10min run time trip -
but we thought in this case we'd leave the description to those who know the intricate story of Muslimgauze best, the Staalplaat crew -

"Long-time Muslimgauze fans with keen eyes and/or photographic memories may immediately notice something about the newly unearthed Sadaams 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 Sadaams Children actually sound like sparse, clean string sounds of Narcotic’s “Saddams 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 10-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."


TRACKLIST:
1. Believers of the Blind Sheikh 19:59
2. Gulf Between us 10:36
3. Tikrit Brotherhood Quartet 16:51
4. Effendi. 14:25

Believers of the Blind Sheikh

Gulf Between us

Tikrit Brotherhood Quartet

Effendi.