- Your shopping cart is empty!
Release date July 1, 2024.
Sleeves are made from extra heavy cardboard with deluxe spot UV finish and inside print.
Re-issue of 1994 album, originally was on the Australian cult label Extreme Music.
The original tracks were perfectly remastered for this first time
ever vinyl release and the new masters received high praise from the
Extreme Music owner Roger Richards.
New sleeve designs were created by Oleg Galay, who is famous for his artworks for many Muslimgauze reissues.
---
""Citadel" is the fourth album release on EXTREME by this enigmatic
Manchester-based group. For over 10 years, Muslimgauze have defined
their style as a Western re-contextualisation of traditional Middle
Eastern music enhanced by technology to form a post-modern mix of music,
politics and culture. Muslimgauze construct the music through ethnic
instruments that are a frame for dark and sometimes foreboding aural
tapestries that capture the essence and mood of the music of the Middle
East and the plight of the Palestinian people.
"Citadel" is an album of exotic Arabic textures where traditional
instruments intermesh with technology, found sounds and voices meld with
drones and synthesizers. The album uses both eastern and western
rhythmic patterns embedded in layers of shifting soundscapes. The title
track "Citadel" with incessant tablas piercing through swirling cymbals
and a haunting melody. "Dharam Hinduja", where staccato percussion moves
to fill the space between pulsing inverted samples, and "Opel" with
drones building only to be overpowered by machine-gun rhythms. "Masawi
Wife & Child" has a subdued rhythmic undercurrent while "Infidel"
stands out with its strident percussion fusing with a myriad of sounds.
"Shouf Balek" incorporates traditional strings that interplay with
rhythm and voice, and "Beit Nuba" with mesmerizing chants weaving
between a persistent drum beat. It all draws to a close with "Ferdowsi"
where percussive improvisations rise and fall through a minimal
soundscape.
Muslimgauze produce a raga music for the technological post-cyber age.
Shifting cultures out of ancient history into the current day,
transcending those traditional forms. "Citadel" has a voice of what is
now and perhaps what is to come. In these troubled political times,
peace through people being unified in harmony whilst maintaining their
own strength and cultural identity is a vision to strive towards." – from the original Extreme press-release