Speaker of Turkish - EP

Great late-period Muslimgauze

     

This release is a highlight in the seemingly bottomless Muslimgauze catalog. Muslimgauze albums run the gamut from pummelling noise-techno to abstract soundscapes, but his dub-inflected experiments, such as this one, are his finest. Winding, hallucinogenic, and dark as pitch, some tracks on this album just seethe. This is what the much-hyped Burial album should have sounded like. The thundering, decaying analog basslines are as shocking as some of Pan Sonic's most abrasive work, but they coil through a souk's worth of sampled Middle Eastern sounds. Bryn Jones generally applied a pretty respectful, light touch to his sampled references, and his work almost never veers too near to schlocky, Thievery Corporation territory. Until iTunes gets a hold of the very limited Al-Zulfaquaar Shaheed (don't hold your breath), a sprawling, beautiful Muslimgauze offering from 1993, this is one of the nicer examples available of the Muslimgauze dub treatment.