Muslimgauze – United States Of Islam

If like me your first impression of MUSLIMGAUZE has been of their political ideals you may be forgiven for pre-judging this album as a vehicle for their political views. This may have put me off, as the aforementioned beliefs are rather radical but let me assure you that this album has no actual lyrics to it, and the only voices heard are those snatches from Radio Rabbat which occasionally poke through.
The album opens with "United States Of Islam (Pt 1)", a ten minute piece of percussion and noise. The whole structure transforms and mutates stopping and starting if and when it likes. Apart from a vocal loop mixed to a miles distance, and a warn hum, the entire range of instruments used are percussive. "Xiao" opens with nasty snarly noises and indiscernable vocals. This once more becomes a percussion track - an easy little pigeon-hole to pop it into, yet there's so much more to it - the amount of different sounds used, and the complexity in which they are arranged makes one's head spin. The two sounds which really stand out are a regularly used cylinder-as-gong, and a bassy tuned drum, around which a barely finite number of hitable things are hit. "Red Crescent (Pt 1)" comes next - again a percussive track, but this one's got a sitar sample / loop and lots of echo on the drums which causes them to cascade in avalanche rolls. This time the obviously-repeated sound is some kind of gong with a short decay time. Next up comes "Muslims Of China" a thudding bass drum driving the track without pause while a vast selection of other drums snap, crack, crash and smash whenever they want to, improvisation which still seems somehow as if it wants to conform, although no one could accuse MUSLIMGAUZE of following easy patterns. Full of small surprises - sustained echoes which themselves form other forms of percussion. The next track is "Red Crescent (Pt 2)" which enters the world riding a sustained, almost ambient hum. It's perhaps even looser, more freeform than the other tracks, yet it seems to retain a certain tension, a sense of threat, or of impending danger. The last track on the album, and the shortest one, clocking in at a mere 9'45" is "United States Of Islam (Pt 2)" - a more upbeat version of the first track, with the same 'running water' sounds and percussion, although a bass drum's steady thump-thump-thump keeps it together a lot more. It could be considered a dub version - the vocal samples & slices have echo-a-plenty. And as per usual, their 1001 percussive sounds weave in and out of each other, making ever-moving patterns.

MUSLIMGAUZE rarely use anything but percussion. This doesn't seem to limit then or what they do, although it does make the music travel in an unswerving straight line. This is no criticism - the World would probably be better off with more like MUSLIMGAUZE. Trance music for the Fast Lane.

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.

<B>United States of Islam</B> is a very percussion driven album and although all the tribal percussion and overall sound is really nice, the tracks themselves just seem to go nowhere making the whole album rather pointless. The album is full of &quot;yes, now it is coming&quot; moments but it just never comes.