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Turn On Arabic American Radio

by Muslimgauze

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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      €9 EUR  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    300 limited edition hand screenprint cd edition hand sewed bandcamp only, CD is out now LP will be out later

    Includes unlimited streaming of Turn On Arabic American Radio via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    edition of 300 
    Purchasable with gift card

      €12 EUR or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    double LP release with new muslimgauze material one LP in ORANGE - SOLID vinyl and one in TURQUOISE - SOLID vinyl. hand creenprinted cover (the most expencive cover in staalplaat history) hand numbered and hand sewed

    Includes unlimited streaming of Turn On Arabic American Radio via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    edition of 300 
    Purchasable with gift card

      €29.50 EUR or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Turn On Arabic American Radio via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      €25 EUR or more 

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 102 Muslimgauze releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Hammer & Sickle, No Human Rights For Arabs In Israel (The Remix), Muslimgauze Memorial Mix Part 4, Port Said audio NL, The Remix, Home demo tracks, eye for an eye, Muslimgauze Memorial Mix Part 3, and 94 more. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      €511.75 EUR or more (35% OFF)

     

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about

Turn On Arab American Radio, Muslimgauze Archive Series volume 34

"Through this release, the music stays on the minimal side, leaning heavily on using a drum machine and minimal Middle Eastern samples and instruments, but like the radio signals only. As I like minimalism and the occasional Muslimgauze release, I immensely enjoyed this."
Vital Weekly number 1365

The relationship between Bryn Jones’ music as Muslimgauze and the track/abum titles he would provide (sometimes right on the tapes he would send in for release, but often determined later, sometimes even giving two different pieces months apart the same title, accidentally or not) has always been a little mysterious. Jones himself can no longer be asked, and as we continue to investigate the swathes of material he provided, you hit sources like the DAT or DATs that make up the contents of the new double LP Turn On Arab American Radio. Nine tracks, the first LP/four tracks titled “Turn On Arab American Radio,” and the other LP/five tracks labelled only “Arab American Radio.” None of them sound particularly radio-esque, although given the simultaneous vastness and ornate focus of Jones’ Muslimgauze work that gap between name and sound is far from atypical.

Instead here the de rigeur percussion loops that underpin this particular set of tracks, while occasionally clipping into the fierce distortion that Jones either loved to use or couldn’t get away from, steer away from both the more consistent application of that distortion as well as the Middle Eastern and Asian influences he often used. It’d be a stretch to call anything here basic boom-bap production but they come closer to it than a lot of Muslimgauze production. And while those loops are, as always prominent, they’re not actually the focus; settling into steady vamps as structures for Jones to pursue an extended and often more gentle exploration of the other sample sources he has here. There are stringed instruments, the sound of water, but most prominently or strikingly the human voice. Nothing is in English but tone and the occasional word (“familia”, “passport”) still provide guides. There are ululations, snatches of melody; but most often speech, dialogue, often tense and harried sounding. Is this what Jones was thinking of or referring to with his “Arab American Radio”?

As with so many other questions about Muslimgauze, we’ll never know the answer to that one. (Most pertinently in this case we might wonder who appears here, and what the context of these recordings is. But Jones never provided that with his submissions.) Here, even though those inexorable loops pound on, indefatigable, that emphasis on some of the people Jones chooses lends a measured gentleness to much of Turn On Arab American Radio, at least within the context of his body of work. The last thing you hear at the end of the second LP is one last question from one of the many speakers on this peculiar Muslimgauze radio, echoed away into infinity. We may never have answers, but those questions continue to resonate.

credits

released December 1, 2022

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about

Muslimgauze Berlin, Germany

Muslimgauze occupied a strange place in the musical world. He was a powerful, prolific innovator, releasing albums that were alternately beautiful and visceral, full of ambient electronics, polyrhythmic drumming and all kinds of voices and sound effects. The recordings earned him a devoted following in underground, experimental and industrial music circles worldwide.

The New York Times 1999
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