Suns Of Arqa – ‘Muslimgauze Re-mixs’ [Emotional Rescue]

Music from Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze has become the Star Trek of underground electronic music. It’s almost guaranteed that at any hour of the day, someone worldwide is playing a track from his 100+ LP catalogue of music. Having passed at just 37 years of age, can’t help but continually wonder where he would have taken things had his life and production had gone past 1999.

I’ve said this before, and will say it again, the most startling thing about Muslimgauze isn’t even the sheer quantity, but more so the quality. Pretty much everything he released – and that’s a lot of music – was mind-blowingly good. After his passing they found six or seven unreleased variations on most tracks, the man was a perfectionist. Fortunately his legacy is more continued access to what was once limited edition releases as opposed to tracks that were never meant to see the light of day.

Pretty stoked about this new plate, reissued and re-released in proper style by Emotional Rescue. Twelve tracks in a total, Muslimgauze Re-mixs is the first vinyl pressing of Jones’ reworkings of several Suns Of Arqa. Created in 1996, picking up the remixed work was the last time Suns Of Arqa founder and lead man Michael Wadada ever saw Bryn.

There’s a few reasons these tracks work so well, and one of those is the world music comparisons between Suns Of Arqa and Muslimgauze. Suns Of Arqa favor a unique blend of dubbed raga twisted in to cosmic jams with Muslimgauze offering a broken and off-beat driven fondness for middle-eastern instruments. The two work well together, but this plate is all about the Muslimgauze sound, given a big step-up by the live and unique source material.

This is twelve tracks of the finest machine-music around, sounding organic as can be in their heavily chopped and dropped form. In true Bryn Jones style the release is available in limited quantities, with four different screen-printed designs on the sleeve. Brilliant sleeve work from House Of Traps rounds off a high-quality product. Get on it quick, it’s going to fly.

Samples from the tracks below and press release underneath that.

via Kristina Records
Emotional Rescue follows up the success of the Suns Of Arqa’s Brujo Magic EP (ERC002) with this special screen-printed first vinyl addition of remixes from the cult producer, Muslimgauze.

The meeting of Suns Of Arqa’s dub rhythms and ethnic harmonies with Muslimgauze’s
Industrial cut-up atmospherics, noise drones and colliding rhythms creates the perfect
result, that could easily of been crafted this year rather than the 20 years ago.
Released as CD only in 1996, the story of how the minds and music of Wadada and
Muslimgauze met is as much the result of geography than the mutual musical desire to work together.

Based in Manchester throughout their career, the meeting was upon Jones seeking to 
work with Wadada. After a visit to the latters home, a full set of the bands recently recorded master tapes were handed over and then some month later the tracks on this album were mailed back in return as you hear them now.

There was never a meeting again between the two, but the material produced was such that it appeared in two differing versions for release on their own respective label outlets.

This first time vinyl addition takes the recordings as they were originally released, from the Sun’s own Arka Sound album and picks 13 tracks that show the marriage of World music with these inspired remixes.

Bryn’s untimely death at just 38 created a cult that left a huge cannon of work that is still being discovered and hopefully, this album will add to that legacy.

Released on vinyl for the first time, with screen printed sleeve by House Of Traps in two colour ways.