Kabul (album) - Early Musical Career

Early Musical Career

Jones first released music in 1982 as E.g. Oblique Graph on Kinematograph, his own imprint, and the independent co-op label Recloose, run by Simon Crab. E.g. Oblique Graph came from the do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos of the time and was musically composed of electronic/experimental drone with occasional synth-melodic hooks and use of radio broadcast samples. Track titles were sometimes politicized such as "Murders linked to Gaullist Clique" on Extended Play (1982) and "Castro Regime" on Triptych (1982).

After operation Peace of the Galilee, the first Muslimgauze album, Hammer & Sickle (1983) appeared on another of Jones's label monikers, Hessian. Under the Muslimgauze alias, music switched from emphasis on pure synthesis to percussion textures, which grew to encompass acoustic drum kits, drum machines, assorted ethnic hand percussion, and even rudimentary objects like pots and pans. Synthesis and tape loop samples were often relegated to accompaniment.

Releases at the time were occasionally on cassette, more often vinyl EPs and LPs; the longest running of Jones' label monikers, Limited Editions, started with Hunting Out with an Aerial Eye (1984) followed by Buddhist on Fire, put out by Recloose the same year. Since then, Jones roughly released an album a year, given scarce financial resources until 1988, when he began making inroads with then-emerging labels Staalplaat, Soleilmoon, and Extreme Records. In 1988, Staalplaat released the first Muslimgauze CD, Iran, the subsequent catalog migrated to mostly that format.

By the late 1980s, Jones ran out of funding to self release, and other labels that did put out Muslimgauze releases such as Recloose and Permis De Construire (which put out Coup D'État) did not pay promised royalties. Recloose head Simon Crab cited lack of sales and damaged records from fire bombing as his reason.

The neighbouring Thomas a Becket pub run by East End gangsters—common-or-garden low-level vicious thugs (years before the species was romanticized by Lock Stock and Mona Lisa)—unable to control our unlicensed trade in alcohol and other illicits, firebombed the building one night and attacked the crew on a regular basis (ironically, many of the new pressings of Muslimgauze’s Buddhist on Fire stored in the Recloose offices were destroyed during this attack). —Stalker blog post The deal with Recloose was that we paid 50 percent of the profits to the artist and 50 percent went to the label, which was a pretty good deal, especially since we didn't sell that much. We put a lot of energy into marketing, and most of the artists signed to the label sold off the back of Bourbonese Qualk anyway. He assumed we sold loads of albums but we didn't even cover the costs. —Simon Crab

At this time distributors Soleilmoon, Staalplaat, and Extreme Records transitioned to a label proper with the advent of the compact disc format, which became less expensive to produce and ship than vinyl over time and gradually took on the Muslimgauze catalog. After a positive experience with the release of Intifaxa (1990) with Extreme, Jones remained with the label until his final release with it, Citadel, in 1994.