Month: November 2022

Bryn Jones’ musical project Muslimgauze relies heavily on middle eastern aesthetics, sounds and politically charged messages. From the name to the rhythms to the cover arts I was quite surprised to read that Jones is not muslim himself nor he never went to the Middle East. 

The two songs we are close-listening to which are Oil Prophets (Pt 1, 2, 3) and Tariq Aziz both mixes traditional middle eastern percussion with breakbeat elements. Tariq Aziz has almost a broken rhythm pattern which makes tape stops, glitches and filters out at times followed by middle eastern percussion and strings. Even though the track follows a repetitive drum programming it still has an ambient feeling to it in terms of structure and minimal chord progression. Oil Prophets (Pt 1, 2, 3) is a bit more of a progressive song in terms of production and structure. I can hear some Arabic vocals while also hearing samples and sounds of darbuka a traditional Turkish/Persian percussion. After following a more rhythmic and static structure the track comes into full power with pads and strings around 13 minute mark. The music is quite cinematic and atmospheric in my opinion. 

As a Middle-Eastern myself I don’t really understand the full intentions of musicians and artists who centre these specific aesthetics and political messages as the biggest part of their work. While I can appreciate the provocation and activism, one can not stop thinking about the Western Orientalism these themes and subjects are vulnerable to.

Jones explains his project’s origins as a response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and heavily uses this theme around his music. I personally can not find any relation to the tracks’ titles and the musical content that they have. Although I appreciate some of his work and how he infuses many different elements in his music, I can’t help but think about the real motives behind this music. It comes off as a weird obsession a British musician had from the comfort of his home to me and comes off as really weird that he would build an entire discography and aesthetic around these topics and imagery without being part of it. Another example that comes to mind is 2006’s N.A.T.O. and her debut album Chor Javon. A commentary made in Arabic about the Afghani war by a Russian producer and Russian singer that has no relations to the Middle East nor have ever visited and don’t really know the language of. 

I would be able to really appreciate these kind of works if these artists have actually gone on their way to do active activism and protest in these Middle Eastern countries themselves and get involved in social resistance groups, when it only becomes an aesthetic and a sound I can’t help but register that as a gimmick that sounded and/or looked cool to the artist.

Leath, S. (2013) An introduction to… Muslimgauze. Available at: https://thevinylfactory.com/features/an-introduction-to-muslimgauze/ (Accessed: 16 November 2022)

In 1992 with the ever-growing new sounds, political movements and discourse happening around Techno music and culture Alec Empire with his friends Hanin Elias and MC Carl Crack forms the band Atari Teenage Riot. Born as a protest against the rising number of fascists and neo-nazis in the Techno scene the band takes the Techno sound to new grounds and creates a new sound called ‘Digital Hardcore’ which heavily uses amiga samplers, punk riffs, techno drums and scream vocals in a heavy and condensed form.

The influences of acid, techno and speed core music can be heard in their early music Hetzjagd Auf Nazis! And Sex.

While born within the techno scene Alex Empire creates and pioneers a new sound with the addition of the iconic band member Nic Endo in 1997. 

Their debut Burn Berlin Burn (also known as Delete Yourself) is angry, fast and has a strong message to their audience. Their music mostly talks about a new revolution influenced by the new technologies happening in the scene such as computers and the fast growing media. Their take on the techno sound is much more political and harsh. The album is sample heavy. It is a new merge of noise, industrial and punk music within the techno elements that is quite unique for the time and its scene.

The music rapidly evolves and distances itself from its original techno roots with more releases they create and the more live shows they play and comes into its form, the signature of of ATR that can be called digital-hardcore. Heavy breaks, guitar riffs, noise melodies, samples and a rave aesthetic they become a polarising figure in the scene. Their performance at the Berlin Wall in May 1st, 1999 solidifies them as strong performers and dedicated artists in the eyes of music lovers while they get describes as violence promoters in the eyes of some media and public because of their strong political stance against fascism. 

In some interviews the band members also calls the music that they do ‘Techno-Punk’. Atari Teenage Riot’s influence in today’s music can be heard from Crystal Castles to Machinegirl. I personally also got really inspired by the boldness of their music when I first started to make music. Their newer releases like ‘Is this Hyperreal?’ Or 2015’s ‘Reset’ experiments more and more with electronic music sounds and creates even bigger sonic spheres. ATR still makes music to this day even though they had some fall-outs during 2000s and they still make music with their original signature Atari ST computer while adding new equipments to their set. Alec Empire the frontman says in one interview to the wired: ‘People look at technology as a religion and say, ‘This will solve all our problems.’ I’m very sceptical about that.”

Burton, C. (2011) Atari Teenage Riot frontman Alec Empire on old tech and new music. Available at: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/techno-reboots-the-atari (Accessed: 6 November 2022).

Resident Advisor (no date) ATARI TEENAGE RIOT. Available at: https://ra.co/dj/atariteenageriot/biography (Accessed: 6 November 2022).

Soundsphere (no date) Interview: Atari Teenage Riot. Available at: https://www.soundspheremag.com/features/interview-atari-teenage-riot/ (Accessed: 6 November 2022).

Grace Jones’ 1985 full length Slave to the Rhythm is sexy, cinematic and an overall fantastic experience with a well thought sound, Jones’ sultry vocals and in your face visual aesthetics. 

Her career being huge in Hollywood as a breakout star Grace Jones was always musical and was interested in more conceptual works of album production. She and Horn came together in 1985 to release the iconic album Slave to the Rhythm which became Jones’ most commercially successful album to date released under Horn’s label ZTT Records. 

The album is a crazy journey of including seven different interpretations of one song. All of the tracks on the album represents another side of Jones’ life and story she calls the album a biographical concept piece. The album was first intended for Frankie Goes to Hollywood as their follow up release after Relax but then later was passed on to Grace Jones. 

The album includes R&B, hiphop and jazz influences throughout with big guitar riffs, groovy drums, Jones’ voiceover deep vocals. 

An extensive usage of digital synthesiser Synclavier was apparently made during the making of this album which used FM synthesis. The warmth of the synth can be heard throughout the album.

Operattack which is the weirdest sounding song on the album was made with Horn’s signature style of sampling. He only sampled Grace Jones’ pre-recorded vocals from the album recording sessions for this track in particular. 

I find the whole piece of work to be dark, enticing and experimental in its sense for its time. While there are mellow synth and pad heavy tracks like The Crossing and The Fashion Show, the album makes strong and sharp turns to tracks such as The Frog and The Princess and Jones the Rhythm which showcases a more heavy R&B sound with signature drums and grooves. When it comes together with Grace Jones’ fashion-forward thinking aesthetic world and performances the album shines like a diamond and a masterclass in creativity and innovative sound and storytelling among its similar releases from those years. The production cost more than $385.000 a huge budget for its time. 

When they were first working on the album with a bass guitar, a Roland JX-8P and 808 drums Horn’s collaborator during this album Andy Richards suggested that the chords are just not working well with the music so they flipped over and inverted the notes while giving the melodies a steady rise. The making process of the album was experimental in its core too. 

Even though it was risky and full of experimentations within the studio the lead single Slave to the Rhythm became a huge hit and made official charts all over the world while dominating America. This album further proved how much of a production genius Trevor Horn is and how he came make everything into gold that he touches.

Griffiths, D. (2022) The story of Grace Jones’ Slave to the Rhythm: tempo changes, stacked Roland synth patches and Trevor Horn. Available at: https://www.musicradar.com/news/slave-to-the-rhythm-song-stories (Accessed: 6 November 2022).

Red Bull Music Academy (2018) Trevor Horn talks Buffalo Gals, Grace Jones and Double Dutch | Red Bull Music Academy. April 12 2018. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR4GwBRWR6Y&ab_channel=RedBullMusicAcademy (Accessed: 6 November 2022)

NEZ’s Turkish Delight and the cross between Western and Middle Eastern sound and aesthetics

Turkish musician and dancer NEZ’s 2002 debut album ‘Turkish Delight’ crosses between the sounds of techno, oriental belly dance music and electronic pop while introducing a never before seen club-girl belly dancer aesthetic in Middle Eastern music. Playing her music and dancing across events right from when she was 18 Nez first started working on the songs and the whole concept by herself. A little later she formed her own band called The Turkish delights. It was not until she was discovered while performing original material to the prominent yet infamous Turkish music producer Erol Köse around 2001 that she started to record these ideas which would later be compiled in the debut album ‘Turkish Delight’.

NEZ was an alien to the Turkish audiences. She seemed very confident in her performance style which was adapted from traditional belly dancing routines and Ottoman Harem aesthetics mixed with well known traditional melodies on top of electro-pop and techno productions supported by her smooth and sultry English and Turkish vocals. What she did was a statement that was misunderstood and panned when it was first out even though she managed to become an overnight sensation and topped the charts with her first single ‘Sakın Ha’. 

NEZ never officially released another piece of work and moved to London where a part of her family lives after the promotional run of the album. Because of the provocative sound and image she portrayed she faced multiple threats and mostly became a controversial figure in the media. I find this album to be way ahead of its time and can see the reasons of backlash. First and foremost NEZ deconstructs what it means to be a female performer by completely ignoring the traditional image of a belly dancer who mostly in Turkish media is just a dancer who doesn’t talk or do anything else but only there to entertain men and makes it a popstar who sings, produces and becomes her own unique thing. I want to talk about how much of a forward thinking feminist move this is and not just for music. Secondly the album creates a sonic atmosphere where traditional and melancholic Turkish scales mixes with uptempo techno and electronic music productions which was never before done by any artist to that date on this scale. While being innovative the work was mostly misunderstood and under appreciated, the audiences couldn’t really understand what this all meant. I will talk about the innovations and thought that went into the musical production of the album.

Lastly I will put all of these points under ‘syncretism’ which is a theme mentioned in the album. Syncretism means to merge and or assimilate traditions together and creating something new out of it. This is mostly with mixing and merging theology and culture. One of the examples include the 16th century emperor Mughal Akbar who created a new belief system by mixing traditions and elements from Islam, Hinduism and Christianity. One of the final songs on the album being called ‘Ethnic Synthetic’ is not a total coincidence. NEZ sings over a techno beat while the song is a cover of ‘Popcorn’ composed by Gershon Kingsley one of the first songs to be recorded and released with Moog synthesiser with traditional melodies NEZ talks over the song ‘dreaming is the only way to success’.

Musique concrète caught my attention immediately after reading and hearing about it in class. A genre and music making technique using recorded sounds and tape music techniques that goes back to 1950, an experimental way of making music for its day. While searching on albums using this specific technique I encountered with a famous Turkish electronic music composer, İlhan Mimaroğlu and his 2 track album ‘Tract’ that was released in 1975. Its full title being Tract: A Composition Of Agitprop Music For Electromagnetic Tape the album features recorded sounds of piano, synthesisers, radio signals and vocals from Tülay German -one of my favourite Turkish singers of all time- under the alias Tuly Sand.

The whole album carries a theme of pro-left wing political messages that was inspired by Turkish political poet Nazım Hikmet and Russian Revolution propaganda which can be seen in the title of the work. Agitprop means propaganda and originated from Soviet Russia used to describe popular media. 

The album is dark and almost has a feeling of walking through the streets and empty halls of a post-war city. First track ‘Part 1’ opens with a noise drone sound that is supported by French vocals that resembles almost chanting and/or dictating. The almost 19 minute track takes quite the journey with samples from radio, Tülay German’s vocals in English, French and Turkish. Part 2 which is nearly 17 minutes long is almost like a continuation of whatever happened in Part 1 this time with even a darker message and more experimental synthesiser and tape recordings sounds. Most of the track is arrhythmic and drones supported by voice recordings that gives updates about war in countries like Turkey, France and the Soviet. Around 13:40 the track melts into a beautiful and romantic ballad with German’s classic vocal stylings that can be heard in her recordings, haunting and mesmerising. German’s vocals follow an ambient sound of keys and single string samples then ends with a piano chord. 

I find the whole piece of work to be very theatrical, dramatic and storytelling. A unique feature which I can’t find in earlier musique concrète records. The work takes the listener on a journey in politics, emotions and melancholic war scenery. 

Mimaroğlu, i. (1975) TRACT. In Tract: A Composition of Agitprop Music for Electromagnetic Tape [Vinyl liner notes]. United States: Folkways Records.

A genre I was always interested in but couldn’t really get into has always been Turkish Arabesque music. Turkish Arabesque is heavy, experimental and bigger than life in sound. The reason I’ve always avoided it was the oversaturated vocal stylings and deep dark lyrics that makes the genre what it is. 

It is almost a wave of melancholy through Arabic melodies, traditional Turkish instruments such as bağlama and darbuka and big, in your face visuals. 

One of the most prominent voices in Turkish Arabesque is Bergen, a female powerhouse vocalist and musician that became famous with her haunting melodies and shocking life story which unveiled in the eyes of the public media. Bergen took the title of ‘Acıların Kadını’ which simply means ‘The Woman of Pain’. She was attacked publicly by her manager and ex-husband with a bottle of acid on her face but she kept on performing and writing songs. Her album ‘Acıların Kadını’ which came out after the attack in 1986 tackles some heavy themes while being so magically haunting.

Fourth track of the album ‘Benim İçin Üzülme’ is an arabesque staple. The song opens with strings that follow a traditional Turkish makam chord in minor. Bergen’s vocals come into the track almost as another layer of strings and a choir of men joins her in post-chorus. The song structure is simple but it makes such an impact that almost glues the listener to its core. 

Track 11 ‘Bi Çare’ is a direct cry to God asking for help. The vocal melodies in this track are complex as they travel in many different runs and belts. The instrumentation follows the album’s typical arabesque sound with the same instruments mentioned above. 

Lyrically the whole album is heavy even when the melodies and the tempo changes to major chords and sound more peppy like in track 10 she still is mourning over what her life was and what it could have been if she has never meant her ex-husband.

Özgür, İ. (2006) Arabesk Music in Turkey in the 1990s and Changes in National Demography, Politics, and Identity, Turkish Studies, 185.

In her work Sonic Meditations, Pauline Oliveros introduces some practices that can be done with an ensemble or a group aiming to understand, listen and meditate through the power of sound and music. Taking sonic energy and its transmission to the core of her meditations these activities attempt us to become one with the energy of sound with erasing our contemporary attempts and environments when we consume sound and music and takes us to more universal and primal practises to do so. Oliveros mentions that these meditations follow a simple procedure of four steps that include; making sounds, actively imagining sounds, listening to present sounds and remembering them. 

Through reading the meditations one can agree that these are very essential steps in admiring and understating the sound and the vibrations that surround us she creates these activities that almost isolates our core vibration with the sound that surrounds us which I find really interesting as it also reminds me of teachings and practices of shamanic rituals that took part over Anatolia and Middle East. Accessibility of some of these practices are questionable such as step seven: Sonic Rorschach. In which the group comes together in a darkened space where there is a noise generator and they lay down on the ground and try to find the source of this noise through meditation in a search to understand and feel frequencies and intensities of light and sound. 

Meditation eighteen specifically caught my attention as Oliveros encourages us to listen to a sound until we don’t recognise it anymore. It really reminded me of a time when I was a little kid and I was repeating the word ‘Çekmece’ which means drawer in Turkish and as I kept repeating the word out loud I’ve realised that it lost its meaning and I no longer could remember what it means or how it sounds like. Reading Oliveros giving this as a part of her meditations showed me once more that the whole of this work and its intend is to turn us to our most primal and early stages of understanding sound, linguistics and mental capacity of how we work with vibrations and repetition. 

Oliveros, P. (2005) Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound practice. United States: Deep Listening Publications. 

TEDxtalks (2015) The difference between hearing and listening. Available at: https://youtu.be/_QHfOuRrJB8 (Accessed: 30 September 2022).