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New Soul
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New Soul
Current price: $21.99
Barnes and Noble
New Soul
Current price: $21.99
Size: OS
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Even after the death of project mastermind Bryn Jones, Muslimgauze continues to pop up in unexpected places. Consider NEW SOUL, an EP that pits the music of France's Spacemen 3-worshiping Reverberation against Muslimgauze's remix machinery. Believe it or not, this odd experiment pays off. Reverberation's droning rock songs (taken from 1996's BLUE STEREO MUSIC) lack low-end heft, so Muslimgauze has anchored them to rugged basslines. While it initially seems that he has also piled on enough samples, breakbeats, and dub hydraulics to obliterate the underlying songs, there's a subtle symbiosis at work here.
NEW SOUL doesn't sound like straight-up Muslimgauze. Jones' remixes are actually quite resourceful. "Blue E." whips up eight minutes of Middle Eastern dub from no more than a hypnotic drumbeat and recurring wisp of sitar extracted from Reverberation's "Blue Ensemble." "Autogyre (Rocket Mix)" turns a minute-long intermission into a sample-propelled drum-n-bass number. And Jones apparently heard the potential for Arabicized hip-hop in the string-draped vagueness of "Night Time (Slight Return)," saw space for clipped breaks and bits of Islamic prayer between the sparse chords of "Space Goes On," and envisioned "Free Your Soul" as a backdrop for sparking electronics. Such a mind ought to be admired.