Muslimgauze ‎– Return Of Black September

Originally issued in 1996 during the none-more-prolific artist’s latter phase, ‘Return of Black September’ slots into the most precious seam of his work where the distortion is finely tempered in favour of hallucinatory dub design and sprawling percussive patterning that still remains among its era’s most singular, if then-overlooked bodies of work.

That aesthetic is pretty much epitomised in the 23’ cinematic saga of ‘Libya’, where snaking drums coil in and out of focus across a dusty, dusky backdrop into the darkest spots and pinched corridors, or in the 23’ of bittersweet Tar meditation and Djinn-dance electro-dubbing of ’Thugghee’.

The shorter ‘Remix of Thughee’ with its haunting lead tone and sand-trample drums and the ghostly electro steppers possession of ‘Remix of Opiate and Mullah’ perfectly serve to illustrate where Vatican Shadow takes his inspiration from, and both properly render Bryn Jones’ work at its most untouchable and threateningly atmospheric.