Salaam Alekum, Bastard

One of Muslimgauze's more fiery releases, containing as it does a shortened but still potent mix of "Hebron Massacre" and with a fierce title to boot, Salaam continues Bryn Jones' remarkable abilities to use recurrent elements in ways that never fail to captivate, or at the very least provide a fine listening experience. The first title track, which leads off the album, shudders with energy, a fast-paced combination of electronic drums and keyboards, acoustic percussion, murmuring samples, and the bells that often recur as a dramatic hook for many of Muslimgauze's songs. It makes for a great start, a quality the album maintains throughout its length, though not all the tracks maintain that same level of intensity. "Haramzada" keeps things on the forward track, but at a midrange level. Neither dreamy nor explosive, it includes the same layering of drone keyboards which Jones often uses to create a strange, ominous feeling in the proceedings. Far more ambient in nature is "Mandarin Guerrilla"; despite the title and the random interjections of shouts, a heavily flanged keyboard line is center stage here, rising and falling over a low-key but increasingly complex series of rhythms. "Poona Eunuch," originally from Zealot, reappears here without change, presumably as a way to give fans a taste of that album once the aborted pressing sold out. One of the more unremarked but still present elements of Muslimgauze's work surfaces here as well, namely his sometimes sharp and sometimes atrocious way around puns, as demonstrated by song titles like "Caste the First Stone" (a gentler number, with an intriguing string/dulcimer melody driving the piece) and "Cairopraktar" (a slow-growing but striking blend of various drums and percussions over a brooding keyboard line).