Muslimgauze

Bryn Jones never practiced Islam and made no journeys to the Middle East, yet his output under the Muslimgauze name positioned him among the Western musicians who voiced the most overt support for Palestinian liberation. Because the Manchester artist’s recordings contained no lyrics, the political stance resided almost entirely in the titles themselves, among them Fatah Guerrilla, Return of Black September, Hebron Massacre, Vote Hezbollah, United States of Islam and The Rape of Palestine. Only the restricted press runs—most editions stayed below one thousand copies—prevented wider debate over the work. Even so, the fusion of sampled Middle Eastern textures, densely phased drones and clashing rhythm tracks stood out as one of the most distinctive statements in the noise underground.

Muslimgauze originated in 1982 as a direct protest against the Israeli incursion into Lebanon; its inaugural record, the Hammer & Sickle EP, followed in 1983 and addressed the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan. Throughout the 1980s Jones maintained a pace of nearly two full-length Muslimgauze albums annually, supplemented by numerous EPs and runs limited to five hundred copies. The 1990 album Intifaxa marked his debut on the Australian Extreme label, home to Robert Rich and Paul Schütze; five further titles appeared on Extreme over the next four years. Simultaneously, half a dozen releases came out on the Dutch imprint Staalplaat, with U.S. distribution handled by Soleilmoon. Output intensified in the mid-nineties: five albums in 1994, six the following year, and eight LPs in 1996. As the experimental scene gained broader attention late in the decade, Jones incorporated denser beats, aligning the project with post-industrial acts such as Techno Animal, Download and Scorn. The Muslimgauze endeavor concluded abruptly in 1999 with Jones’s sudden death from a rare blood disorder. Posthumous issues included Lo-Fi India Abuse, a partial collaboration with the dub collective Systemwide, and the nine-disc Box of Silk and Dogs.