Return Of Black September
available: July 8, 1996
Muslimgauze returns to the dubby and laid-back styles after his recent aggressive onslaughts. Packed in a digipak, edition of 600 copies. On the cover you will find a cover for DAT only release. Send this along with your blank DAT and get extra, unreleased material, which will not be available anywhere else.
Press release from Staalplaat.
The following appeared in The Wire.
The excellent Black September, a 500-only limited edition, is a continuous, five-part, 68 minute epic is as formidably competent as ever, although more for the brooding, surreal nature of its sound-world than for its grooves, which here sound almost subsidiary. The soul samples and restlessly evolving minor-chord kaleidoscopes that unfold throughout the work is prima facie evidence of a musician on a roll.
review by: Paul Stump
This text originally appeared in The
Wire magazine (issue # 145).
Reproduced by permission.
The Wire on-line index.
The following appears in All Music Guide.
Boldly named after one of the most notorious Palestinian terrorist organizations, the group which carried out the Israeli Olympic athlete massacre in 1972, September matches its dark black artwork and design with equally doom-laden music (mastered as one track, despite the five separate song titles listed on the back). The title track relies on a slightly more gentle ominousness, with soft string plucking reverberating around the beat, but things start to pick up accordingly with the more aggressive, sharp-edged electronics shading into a tense blend of percussion and energy on "Libya"; after shading away into a more minimal midsection, the track returns at a nervous, quick pace, with drums and drum pads firing off echoes into the mix as drones snake in and out of the song. One particularly gripping section has shards of noise firing off in all directions before settling back into the frazzled energy of the central beat, feeling like a soundtrack to a particularly good chase scene in a movie. "Thugghee" and its accompanying remix keep the unsettled edge up, with sudden drum and electronic pulse intrusions erupting over the main flow of the songs. It's interesting to hear how Bryn Jones' love of dub applies itself in even more creative and different ways than from his productions of some years before, exchanging the slow pace for a fast one and applying Krautrock drone principles. A nicely stretched out, creepy remix of Gun Aramaic's "Opiate and Mullah" wraps up this fine effort.
Review by: Ned Raggett
All Music Guide
The following appeared in Chainlink D.L.K..
Second in the series re-editions of older Muslimgauze music released by Staalplaat, "Return of Black September" (which is also the name of one of the most notorious Palestinian terrorist organizations) presents yet another face of the artist's eclectic production. Originally released in a limited edition of 500 copies, the year 2004 will offer 800 lucky people (make that 799, I got my copy already!) the possibility to taste Muslimgauze's interpretation of what sounds like a deep, droning and disturbing ritual made of soft finger-tipping Darbuka percussion skin patterns, single hits of both delayed and unprocessed drums, loops of stringed wide-range instrument, field-recorded noises and voices, or just breaths and whispers. Quite alienating and scary at times, "Return of Black September" goes about its business in a continuous fashion, divided into five parts, totalling more than an hour of music. Experimental dark electronics meets tribal and ethnical mantras of ancient and distant culture creating a new breed of electrified world music. Although the middle of the record portrays the most inspirational and every day life sounding part of this record, the darker and nastier side takes the lead at the top and the tail of the record, with increasingly predominant and saturated rhythmical grooves. Bryn Jones was so far ahead of its time, you can't even begin to comprehend if you don't know at least one tenth of his discography, totalling almost 200 titles so far.
Review by: Marc Urselli-Schaerer
Chainlink D.L.K. (May 18, 2004)
see also Arab Quarter, Return Of Black September, Re-mixs, Gun Aramaic and Occupied Territories, Azzazin, Return Of Black September, Remixs, Arab Quarter & Gulf Between Us & Return Of Black September, Re-mixs, and Occupied Territories
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