Muslimgauze – From the Edge (deluxe edition)

The Muslimgauze Preservation Society put together another release, this one a double disc set. CD one is an unreleased album off a audio cassette master likely recorded in 1990. Disc two contains remixes by various artists including Chris & Cosey, Legion of Green Men, Higher Intelligence Agency, and Faust among others. While listening to the masters so I could prepare a press release write up for TMPS, there was concern about audio source limitations. Hence, the masters were brought to long time Muslimgauze audio engineer, John Delf  to apply his magic to. Delf worked with Bryn Jones in the studio since 1993, and has moved on to an impressive career doing audio engineering for the likes of Arab Strap, Add N to X, Oasis, and Lilly Allen, among others. After he did his work on the masters and bounced the track back to the TMPS, I noticed the tape his was present. This was an aesthetic decision on his part not to remove it, and upon reflection I concur. It is not a difficult task to apply noise removal software to remove tape hiss, but somehow, doing so denies something essential from the sound. Listening to the master with and without noise removal is like the difference between a lush field and a golf course. I grew up with cassette tapes and have an impressive collection still, my transition to compact disc was reluctant. Cassette players used to have a ‘Dolby Noise Reduction’ feature to get rid of the hiss and the music felt like listening to a concert from the bathroom instead of right at stage. Consequently, I never used that feature. TMPS embraced the hiss, much the way one would embrace the source limitations of a Woodie Gutherie or Benny Goodman 78 from the 30′s, a psych-rock 45 from the 60′s,  or an Industrial tape from the 80′s. The music Bryn made sounds fantastic, the track is great and the tape hiss often gets lost in the sheer beauty of the music. But those like me, who have a substantial (and growing) cassette tape collection are relishing in the sounds. In some ways, if you have the right audio setup and gear, an tape can sound arguable better than most CD’s. In the obsession of noise removal and direct sound, our audio experience went digital for the sake of quality. But since then, this mad rush to an MP3 listening experience sacrificed quality for convenience. One step forward, two steps back.

Here is the TMPS write-up below:

The Muslimgauze Preservation Society are proud to offer you a fragment of previously unreleased musical history, vintage Muslimgauze from 1990. It was around this time when a young John Goff wrote a fan letter to Bryn Jones, along with his wishes to release a Muslimgauze track. Jones promptly responded with a cassette master of not only a track, but a whole album. At the time, Muslimgauze was signed to Extreme who were wary of fans who wanted to release music by their marquee artist. On the other hand, Jones was stymied by Extreme’s one-release-a-year schedule, but that did not stop him from making more music. At Jones urging, however, Extreme relented and Goff released the exquisitely hand carved single track 7-inch “Red Crescent Part 3” (The Way Out, 1993), but the rest of the tape remained unreleased. Not long after Jones’ passing on January, 1999, Goff organized a tribute remix album based on fragments from the masters. Many responded, more than the album could accommodate. The results were From the Edge (Chlorophyll, 2003 on vinyl and Azra, 2004 on CD). The unreleased remixes joined the unreleased masters in the vaults, until now in a wonderful two disc set! Disc one has two tracks at 20 minutes each. Track one is “Muslimgauze live at the Manchunian Turkish Baths”and track two is “Muslimgauze Unreleased Tracks”. The music was composed not long after Uzi (Parade Amoureuse, 1989) and is a cousin to Intifaxa (Extreme, 1990), only livelier. Tracks are comprised entirely of percussive textures; from machine, to acoustic, and ethno-drums along with cymbals, bells, high-hats, chimes, and gongs among others. The sole treatments are reverb, delay, and echo. Despite the narrow palette, this is still a lush and full recording, rhythms energetic and deeply kinetic. Not quite industrial, not quite IDM, From the Edge straddles the nether-regions between genres; classic Muslimgauze. The cassette master was brought to John Delf for post production and restoration. Together, Delf and TMPS made an aesthetic decision, to focus on the music and not remove the tape hiss for fear of compromising the sound. Hence, there are source limitations, but we feel the beauty of the music more than makes up for this. Cassette culture was a fact of the 80′s and we urge fans to approach this recording the way one would a recording of an old blues 78 from the 30′s, a psych-rock 45 from the 60′s, or an Industrial tape from the 80′s. As for the remix disc, some songs will be familiar to those who have earlier editions of From the Edge, but others will be new, including a few from a band Jones loved called Faust. As always, the discs will be packaged in a super-jewel case, with papyrus covers hand printed in Egypt, a fold-open poster with liner notes, and a bonus sticker. This is lovingly restored piece of history and a missing link in the musical development of Muslimgauze. Limited to an edition of 500.