Muslimgauze - Lazhareem Ul Leper [Staalplaat - 2010]Despite Muslimgauze' ubiquitous heavy-handed political titles, I've always thought Bryn Jones' music was among the most solitary, mysterious and abstract of outsider art, sending few interpretable signals beyond an undeniable groove and an intense, wordless mysticism. It's a physical, unrelentingly repetitive music with intense performative energy that easily reaches the most ancient parts of the brain, those responsible for rhythmic movement, motor skills and coordination. In many ways, Muslimgauze's style is not at all dissimilar to the beatific psychedelic droning of subdued, explicitly ritualistic groups like Rapoon or Tuluum Shimmering. It's primarily the balance of the mix that is different - in Bryn Jones' world, the deep, overloaded reptile tone of the hand drum (somewhat consistent from album to album) is always king, with the scintillating, arrhythmic sample-based loops, field recordings and lo fi atmospheres weaving softly around it. "Lazhareem Ul Leper" contains some of Muslimgauze' lushest, most iridescent loops. Percussive analog synth squelches are a prominent feature, as well as metallic delay and phasing effects so thick and rich they often coalesce into semitonal and chord-like nectarous harmonic wisps. Samples of exotic flutes, sitars and other instruments are arranged into mesmerizing ostinatos. This is the most 'melodic' Muslimgauze recording I've heard (along with the almost ambient "Vote Hezbollah" from 1993), and for that reason accessible by comparison to Jones' usual fare.
Though mastered very loud as is typical of Bryn's work, this album isn't as much an exercise in almost unbearably harsh digital saturation terrorism as other late period albums like "Alms for Iraq", which features tracks that suddenly skyrocket to torturous sonic levels without warning or fade in. The music found here certainly breathes a little more; Bryn's spamodic bursts of real time effects modulations do occur, but mostly serve to lend energy and variation to the existing sounds rather than mangle them completely.
Essentially this is one of the most solid, listenable and fascinatingly creative Muslimgauze releases I've heard. Every of the 17 tracks is a powerful, entrancing exercise in rhythmic meditation. Bryn notably never lets a beat play so long it wears out its welcome and begins to bore the listener, something that frequently happens on many of his other recordings. No song excedes the 4 minute mark, excluding the 8 minute "Chaikhana" (which consists of two distinctly separate jams). I highly recommend this album to any seasoned fan of Muslimgauze, or even mildly interested neophyte.
  Josh Landry
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