Muslimgauze remains as relevant today as he has ever been – and just as controversial.
Bryn Jones may be the most prolific dead man around. The strikingly consistent rate of his releases since the turn of the millennium is made all the more peculiar given he died 25 years ago, to a rare fungal infection. If the cause of death appears unconventional, it very much befits the unconventional life the Mancunian led.
Born in Salford in 1961, Bryn Jones first began releasing music as early as 1982, under the moniker E.G. Oblique Graph. As is often the case with bedroom producers who embrace a D-I-Y ethos, Jones was reclusive and secretive. His first documented live performance supposedly left him traumatised to the point where it took 9 years for him to try it again. There is a tendency for these kinds of enigmatic figures to garner a cult of personality – a mythology around them, with fans bubbling with excitement at unlocking each new piece of lore. The reality may find many of these personalities to have been far less singular and notable than imagined.
The Muslimgauze project began in 1983, the alias deriving from a somewhat inelegant pun on the fabric ‘Muslin-gauze’, hinting at his central fascination: the oppression of people in Islamic countries. Fascination can become fetishisation, especially for a white Englishman who was neither Muslim nor ever visited the Middle-East. The absence of lyrics in his music might have made his messages oblique were it not for his inherently political branding. Song titles like ‘Vote Hezbollah’ and ‘All the Stolen Land of Palestine’, along with album art depicting bandaged Palestinian children and veiled women wielding guns, make it nearly impossible to separate his abstract music from his explicit political beliefs.
Yet because his music is largely instrumental, it does make for a highly subjective listening experience. Jones himself seemed to reinforce this subjectivity, having stated that “Muslimgauze have very strong political beliefs, but you can listen to a track without having opinions pushed down your throat.” Jones was especially conscious to ensure his music did not become “preaching”. Whilst risking a descent into the wearisome debate around the ethics of separating the art from the artist, understanding the music of Muslimgauze might mean ignoring Bryn Jones.
In large part, Muslimgauze’s music is defined by difficulty. The sheer volume of his discography prevents an easy digestion of his style, but a closer examination of one of his most critically acclaimed projects, Mullah Said, may provide a window into this enigma.
The titular opener sets the tone. A repetitive dub bass beat serves as a metronome, its foregrounded simplicity belying the ever-shifting soundscape of background vocal samples and hand percussion. The synths tie everything together – ominous and gloomy but subtle in the mix so that they hover and roam without overpowering nor underwhelming. Fleeting moments where percussion fades bring them out in all their richness.
‘Every Grain Of Palestinian Sand’ pulses with a faster tempo – the throbbing beat could almost lead into a dance track, but maintains a patient repetition that never shifts, once again acting as a metronome. The hypnotic strings take the spotlight here, whilst vocal samples of prayer, song and chatter appear abruptly only to fade just as quickly.
The formula remains similar in ‘Muslims Die India’, but whilst the first two songs feel like an experiment in creating atmosphere, this is the first track that actually feels like a lamentation. A repeated croaky inhale – the sound of wailing – cuts off sharply, unsettling in its abruptness. It returns repeatedly, revealing more of the sorrowful female voice that has almost become a stereotype in itself: the cry of a woman grieving in Arabic, a painful sound so often heard in news reports that it has desensitised many listeners. The universal emotion behind the noise might illicit concern from many, but for Westerners, the unfamiliarity of the language provides a safe distance, often rendering that concern only momentary. For many, these cries may be subconsciously associated more with distant news reports than with real-life current events. Muslimgauze either demands a deeper engagement, pulling the listener into the sorrow it conveys, or, through the sharp cut-offs, pointedly mirrors and critiques the Western tendency for fleeting attention.
Alternate mixes of the previous two tracks offer more of the same. ‘Muslims Die India (2)’ fades into an eerie emptiness, before the beat unexpectedly resurfaces. Some of these experiments can feel half-formed, but the general formula and instrumentation remains strikingly coherent.
That is until the final song: ‘An End’. The album’s first sub-ten-minute track, the two-minute closer features an intimate feminine voice singing, juxtaposed with rat-like screeches, insistent hand percussion, and the occasional deep rumble of a male voice buried in the mix. It makes for perhaps the most interesting song on an interesting project. Yet there remains a level of discomfort with it all.
When ignoring Bryn Jones, there is value to be found in much of Muslimgauze’s music, but ignoring Bryn Jones becomes difficult when many of his inclinations become apparent within the music. Whilst Mullah Said is experimental and distinctive, its technological innovation is used in most part to perpetuate a stereotypical Western perspective: A war-torn eastern land, laden with male chanting and wailing women. In dubious attempts to recreate the ambiance of war, Muslimgauze ends up glamorising it.
Jones once claimed “To have been in a place is not important. So you can’t be against apartheid unless you have been in South Africa?” But the issue with Jones is not his Englishness or his decision to address oppression abroad, but rather his tendency to simplify these struggles in a way that aligns with orientalist tropes.
Whilst his unwavering focus on the subject speaks to a degree of sincerity, it’s the manner of his approach that draws questioning. He was clearly obsessed with the oppression of Muslims, but his understanding of the Middle-East was ignorant and reductive. The notion of Islam as inherently despotic is itself an age-old orientalist construct, yet Jones’ evident admiration for the likes of Qaddafi, Hussein and Khomeini (the latter of which features heavily in his album art) does little to challenge this stereotype. By elevating such figures, he actually reinforces it.
Parts of the world will certainly be more sympathetic to an earnest exploration of his music and character than others. Many have cited Jones as more anti-Zionist than pro-Palestinian, and while many may see those terms as interchangeable, it doesn’t entirely matter – his uncompromising repudiation of Israeli humanity was so blunt and forceful that it overshadowed any real engagement with the beauty, complexity and diversity of actual Islamic life.
Jones sent thousands of tapes to record labels during his lifetime, and perhaps its unsurprising his music is still being released, and still has an audience today. His politics feel almost more suited to our present era than his own, where brash, oversimplified headlines flourish in a climate of populism and overnight activism where loudness is equated with wisdom. When Iran fired missiles at Israel, many pro-Palestinians cheered for the same government that, just two years prior, had opened fire on peaceful protesters following the brutal, misogynistic killing of Mahsa Amini. In Muslimgauze’s work, the imagined soundscapes of Middle-Eastern conflicts merge into a single, monolithic struggle, casting one side as evil and the other as righteous. Such a message denies the real life struggles of ordinary Middle-Eastern people who do not wake up deciding to be activists or revolutionaries, but whose lives are tragically dictated by violent politics.
Palestinians have been cheered by Western activists simply for being Palestinian. This sentiment isn’t misplaced—years of silence on the issue have necessitated it – but there’s a risk in reducing people to symbols rather than celebrating the depth of their artistry and expression. An important step towards encouraging empathy for different cultures is to illuminate their actual culture. With this in mind, I’d like to spotlight some talented artists of North African and Middle-Eastern origin whose work is often overlooked in the Western mainstream.
Egypt, for instance, has experienced a remarkable surge of artists in the field of electronic music. Assyouti, Rama, 3Phaz, Postdrone and Hassan Abou Alam are just some of the names who have been garnering acclaim for their work. ABADIR is a particular standout; on his album Mutate he experimented with using call and response to integrate amen breaks with Egyptian darbuka drums. He is also an electronic music editor for the Arabic magazine Ma3azef and has critiqued the exoticisation of Arabic elements in music by Western media. As has the wonderful ZULI, who creates adventurous, genre-defying music suited to both club environments and personal listening. His song ‘Bro! (Love it)’ incisively satirises Western expectations of what North African music ‘should’ sound like.
Elsewhere in Lebanon, the duo Snakeskin, comprised of Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal have become prominent figures in Beirut’s alternative music scene. Their music amalgamates dream pop with industrial and ambient elements, resulting in rich, ethereal and frequently experimental soundscapes. In October 2024, they released They Kept Our Photographs, a hauntingly beautiful album expressing and reflecting upon the grief of the past year. Both Sabra and Tabbal have collaborated with Anthony Sahyoun, another talented Lebanese artist. Sahyoun has released complex ambient music as well as composing film scores and sounds for art installations.
Equally, Iran is producing a generation of unique, gifted and politically-mobilised artists. Rojin Sharafi is a sound artist and engineer who has experimented with both acoustic and electronic approaches. Her November 2024 release ‘O.O.Orifice’ explores the liminal spaces in-between the “cuts” we leave on our bodies, metaphorical or otherwise. Her song ‘dbkkk’ is a highlight of the 2023 compilation album Intended Consequence, which featured music entirely composed by Iranian women, in support of the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom.’ movement. She, like many other upcoming Iranian artists, takes much inspiration Sote. With releases on esteemed labels including Warp Records, Opal Tapes and SVBKVLT, Ata Ebtekar, better known as Sote, finds himself alongside electronic music royalty. His 2024 album, Ministry of Tall Tales is composed entirely of synths, and reflects upon political and current affairs in Iran.
Similarly, Palestinian hip-hop group DAM has been celebrated for exploring themes of identity, culture and resistance. Despite facing extensive political pressure from the Israeli state, they have continued to release music with originality, authenticity and infectious amounts of energy. Sama’ Abdulhadi, another emblematic voice of Palestinian music, has been described by many as the “queen of the Palestinian techno scene”. Her 2018 Boiler Room set in Palestine has been viewed over 13 million times, and became a beacon of joy and hope, far from the grief and atrocities so many Palestinians have endured both before and since.
I have recently launched the music and culture blog Disorientalise. The platform seeks to ‘disorientate orientalism’, challenging orientalist tropes, narratives and practices through critical engagement with contemporary art and culture, illuminating the vibrancy and texture of widely varied regions and peoples.
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