Ray Van Mechelen wrote:
second disc is insane!
@ e,r: you only listened to his 80s stuff then or do you mean the music that came out after his death? And about his political views, it's hard to separate the music from the political statements he made but I always try to listen with a pair of objective ears (but it's hard as I am 200% pro-Palestine). I know he followed much, much more then only the Palestine-Israël conflict, which I don't tbh. It was a teacher from high school who got me into Muslimgauze many years ago, he knew I read a lot about the conflict so he borrowed me a copy of Citadel and I was hooked 
I like a lot of his different styles actually and I even find the stuff that came out after his death very interesting, some of it has a more harsh/industrial sound which I really like.
Great, you are meant to separate the music from its title and judge it for what it really is,,,,kinda harder to do if you keep buying stuff from the same artist,,,
Defiantly not on the pro Palestinian side,,, in fact no matter where the conflict is,- if Muslims are involved I’d probably pick the opposite side (be it India Beirut or a Sydney’s Cronulla beach), Saying that, Let me just say Bryn had very little clue about the politics of the middle east back then,and most of his record titles/philosophy came directly from sensational headlines in the Sun newspaper or other equal publications that he’d look at, at the newsstand/library , as all his time/money went into his music (facts might have changed later though, as he stopped releasing his own music)
And he was surely not at all a practicing Muslim!
He could not quote the Koran, knew Arabic of any dialect and/or give a real insight into the events he mentioned on those record sleeves.
I remember asking him about Abu Nidal, straight after he announced that to be the name of his next album, and I realized he knew fuck all about the man.(he did not realized that the guy was responsible for vicious attacks In airports in Europe not just in Israel and was not part of the Fatah movement with Arafat , but just a standalone mercenary)
I think that initially he was equally interested in the Afghan conflict and once the Taliban kicked them Russians out of there, he somehow felt part of that “victory” in a strange kind of way,,, and generally thought “revolutions are good” He got off the Iran subject pretty quickly when realizing there was nobody sane to support over there, Israel was an easy target for him and the fact that there was “people there buying my music” only made him more convinced he should stick to his guns on the subject. With you saying you “200% pro Palestinian” and got turned on by Citadel, then he probably did achieve
that goal as this was exactly what he was aiming for.(I could upload some of the old interviews I got up here, so you would see that this was exactly what he intended to do, not explain the situation. Just create an interest in it!)
No, for me his “shtick” did not seem that important and with the arrival of acid house/ecstasy And changes taking place in Europe in the late 80’s I thought Bryn,
(similar to say Genesis P Oridge) was stuck in a(negative/dark) time warp, and the music was not as interesting as other stuff that was happening around(Detroit/bleep/idm etc).
Now I loved the early output and was generally into that experimental industrial eastern sounding stuff with loads of percussion that he was doing, even pre Hajj
(and btw he was NOT the only one: Vox Populi in France, Het Zweet in Holland, Vasilisk in Japan, O Yuki Conjugate’s - Into Dark Waters, SPK with the Byzantium stuff, and Steve Coe/Suns Of Arqa were all doing similar stuff, not to mention the likes of Test Dept & 23 Skidoo with similar live percussion approach)
But sort of gave up on him later on, I did however listen to some here and there (Tandoori Dog was one I liked and probably should have bought but did not cause of its price tag)anyhow them last 2 tracks you have posted were not imo some of his finest. And I cannot recall listening to the stuff that came out after he died, but then I rarely check out cd’s (with the exception of Ramiro Jeancarlo in the last 3 monthJ)
Being the nice guy that I am here’s a short rip of the first ten minutes(it goes for over an hour) from an interview that ended up on 3PBS FM (Melbourne) late 1987, Where Bryn explains a few central facts about Muslimgauze,
This was a tape that was sent over with the (60+!!)questions typed down, and what you hearing are only his replies
http://www.sendspace.com/file/u5ys1o
n-joy
'Sing while you may - lullabies for the new dark ages'
but damn this song is just wonderful
