Muslimgauze

Leo

Well-known member
is it ok nowadays to say you like muslimgauze? some of the recent reissues are pretty decent, "drugsherpa" in particular has a real shackleton vibe, 20-years ahead of his time. he took some harsh anti-israeli positions, but does that matter?

the topic has been discussed here on occasion, interesting music from artists with questionable or even offensive personal beliefs (whitehouse, death in june, etc.)
 

paolo

Mechanical phantoms
As far as I know Muslimgauze is 'accepted' in the underground music world

Has anyone ever stopped liking an act after finding out something dodgy about them?
 

zhao

there are no accidents
He is dodgy but people can still like the noises he made I guess?
http://datacide.c8.com/anti-semitism-from-beyond-the-grave-muslimgauze’s-jihad-2/

Bryn Jones was not dodgy, he was an amazing musician with clear ethical and political vision.

what IS dodgy is this skewed article:

"hateful propaganda"? Article makes this claim and has zero examples for demonstration.

I guess "hateful propaganda" for the author is a label also fit for BDS and any other anti-apartheid, pro-human rights movement.

Muslimgauze 4 life. Some of his masterful and beautiful music can be heard on Middle Beast.
 

Brother Randy Hickey

formerly Dubversion
As far as I know Muslimgauze is 'accepted' in the underground music world

Has anyone ever stopped liking an act after finding out something dodgy about them?

for the most part, 'dodgy' acts tend to make dreadful music -Death In June being a notable example.

I still play the odd Non record whilst being entirely aware that Boyd Rice is a bellend
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
for the most part, 'dodgy' acts tend to make dreadful music -Death In June being a notable example.

I still play the odd Non record whilst being entirely aware that Boyd Rice is a bellend

See, that's not accurate though because I have tons of friends from the metal scene who are still like "Well, THESE records are bad, but this one..." (mind you, I've never had the time for DiJ. Modern America's obsession with folk has me lump it all as being leprosy for the ears, no matter what context.) It doesn't necessarily follow the Skrewdriver/Johnny Rebel archtype of "These guys suck, so they're using racism as a corny gimmick to fuel their career and give them a D-List audience that'll keep the money rolling in."
 

connect_icut

Well-known member
I used to be a massive Coil fan but I found Sleazy's behaviour/pronouncements towards the end of his life extremely disturbing and stopped listening to anything he was involved in. I came back to it, though. I stopped listening to Current 93 for a long time to because of his association with bullshit like Death in June but came back to that too, quite recently.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
don't want to get into some big Israel/Palestine thing but can't less this pass unchallenged:

w/o excusing anything Israel/U.S./etc has done, how is dedicating records to Abu Nidal, Khomeini, Hamas, Hezbollah etc at pro-human rights? what about the human rights of the many, many people the Iranian regime has imprisoned, tortured, murdered? or those of any of the Druse, Maronites, etc Hezbollah and other Shiite militias have killed? he dedicated a record to the Taliban, ffs. I'm not saying anyone should feel bad for liking Muslimgauze's music but it is very inaccurate to present him as some human rights campaigner. he does have a clear political vision but that's not it.

and of course the irony, or one of many, is that the Taliban, Khomeini and many others he glorified would have immediately banned his music as sacrilegious, and I suspect most of the people and movements he advocated would have wanted nothing to do with him.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
don't want to get into some big Israel/Palestine thing but can't less this pass unchallenged:

w/o excusing anything Israel/U.S./etc has done, how is dedicating records to Abu Nidal, Khomeini, Hamas, Hezbollah etc at pro-human rights? what about the human rights of the many, many people the Iranian regime has imprisoned, tortured, murdered? or those of any of the Druse, Maronites, etc Hezbollah and other Shiite militias have killed? he dedicated a record to the Taliban, ffs. I'm not saying anyone should feel bad for liking Muslimgauze's music but it is very inaccurate to present him as some human rights campaigner. he does have a clear political vision but that's not it.

and of course the irony, or one of many, is that the Taliban, Khomeini and many others he glorified would have immediately banned his music as sacrilegious, and I suspect most of the people and movements he advocated would have wanted nothing to do with him.

point, obviously. Faults can be found with specific proclaimed allegiances, i think his clear ethical vision was on a bigger scale, the Arab cause, after a century of being bullied from outside. But no he wasn't perfect, and like many artists, some of his ideas were not grounded in reality, but an idealism...

anyhow the music is sometimes/often fantastic (albeit with that volume of course quality control was a bit of an issue)
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
^tbh the more I think about it his vision wasn't very clear. he just embraced his own version of singular Muslim (not Arab, an important difference) struggle w/o any regard to nuance or the internal differences and struggles of the Muslim world. hence such oddities as records dedicated to groups that hate each other (Hamas + Fatah, Iranian regime + Sunni militants, etc) possibly even more than Israel/The West. also - another irony - his view of Islam is very orientalist, just with romanticized jihad in the place of the traditional stereotypes, to the exclusion of nearly all other Muslim culture, not to mention theology. and he was anti-all opponents of any Islamic struggle, even struggles that many Muslims themselves would not support. these are views that I'd argue, even w/o into the question of anti-Semitism, do no favors to Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims, . having said all that, I wholly agree art is under no obligation to present a coherent vision, political, ethical or otherwise. I do find something particularly objectionable in a man fervently espousing a distorted version of causes he seems to have taken no time to truly understand, but that shouldn't bear on people liking his music. I like plenty of art while rejecting part or all of its politics. I just wanted to be clear that when people say "muslimgauze is just misunderstood" or he's being slandered, they're wrong.

undoubtedly he is an interesting character. I wonder what he would have made of Iraq - would he have dedicated records to both Zarqawi and Muqtada al-Sadr even as they dragged into it a vicious civil war? or Syria? of course we'll never know.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
That's an interesting point padraig. (Great posts from you generally, as usual)

Did Jones ever say anything about the Iran/Iraq war? I am guessing he avoided it.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I like some of MG's music but isn't he pretty much the paragon example of a "politically engaged" Westerner who actually knows fuck all about the Middle East beyond the fact that he really, really, really, really hates Israel and that any group that also hates Israel must be pretty groovy?

But more broadly, I don't think there's much to be gained from going down the artistic-merit vs. political/moral 'dodginess' avenue yet again. I doubt there's a single regular member here who doesn't like at least some music by artists they consider to hold questionable or unpleasant values, be it misogynistic rock or hip-hop, homophobic dancehall, far-right black metal or whatever.
 

nomos

Administrator
Good discussions like these keep getting buried in those blasted rolling threads so I've moved it here.

As you were.
 
Last edited:

Leo

Well-known member
thanks for moving the thread, nomos.

setting ideology aside, i wonder what he'd sound like today. his music seemed to have two speeds -- ambient/drone-ish and harsh percussion -- with not much progress or evolution over his body of work, it was one or the other. perhaps dubstep might have influenced him in some way.
 

martin

----
I never really got MG, seemed really drab and repetitive and, like Maurizio Bianchi, one of these artists where's just too many crappy releases (way too many) to risk £s investigating the entire back catalogue. And I agree about the orientalism, he was basically a shut-in living in Manchester who spent all day making tapes and loved Hamas as much as Joe Strummer loved the Red Brigade...
but...but...
to give him his due, 'Flajelata' is a fucking fantastic record - seriously dark and trippy and brimming with Cold War paranoia.
Other than that though, most MG I've heard just sounds like...er, Transglobal Underground.
 

Leo

Well-known member
'Flajelata' is a fucking fantastic record - seriously dark and trippy and brimming with Cold War paranoia.
Other than that though, most MG I've heard just sounds like...er, Transglobal Underground.

shows how much i know...found a copy of this online and it sounds pretty different from his usual ambient/harsh beats. there's different instrumentation from most of his stuff. thanks mentioning it, i like.
 
Top