‘turn on arabic radio oscura’ is a very clever edit from London duo Time Is Away, smartly blending together tracks by SSIEGE and Muslimgauze. Issued by Dutch label Knekelhuis on a limited edition of 60 transparent 10” dubplates, this delightful record features some homemade flower designs and unsurprisingly sold out swiftly. All parties have decided to donate profits from this release to Delia Arts Foundation, a charity currently supporting children and musicians in Gaza, which should be applauded and also links back to Bryn Jones’ own work emphasising the Israel-Palestine conflict across his vast Muslimgauze output.

This record also offers a nice chance to highlight the enduring nature of a smart blend; see reports of Ricardo Villalobos closing out his set at Houghton this year with that 2001 Whitney/Kraftwerk bootleg by Girls On Top. To some, both this new Time Is Away record and that Girls On Top classic could be seen as a mash-up. A terrible term but so prevalent in music at one point it has been anointed era status in a misty-eyed Vice article from a few years back. But much like the name itself, mashups were always at the crude end of the scale. And they do live on today it seems, with random pop a capellas bolted onto throwaway jazz house cuts with no real nuance in Ableton. A friend who works for an unnamed online record store assures me these are perennial best-sellers.

Which leads me onto the point that irrespective of whether you call them edits, blends or mash-ups, there is something about them which makes both appealing at a certain, perhaps naive, point in your life, and also quite difficult to trim them out of your record collection at another. As I type this review, I can feel fading memories re-awaken of a nearby, beer-soaked 12” bootleg of Dead Prez and Jay Z by The Nextmen that was almost certainly dropped too many times in the bars and basements of East London in my formative years…..

I can’t say I was familiar with “Turn On Arabic American Radio-Song 3,” the Muslimgauze track used by Time Is Away’s Elaine Tierney and Jack Rollo here. It’s nestled mid-way through a collection Staalplaat issued in 2023, among a dozen or so archival Muslimgauze releases that year. But I was a huge fan of ‘Virgo Oscura,’ the SSIEGE track they pair with it, which originates from an excellent 2022 Knekelhuis compilation of ‘rustic electronics’ called ...It Wasn't Really Me.

The chirping BOC-style melodics of the SSIEGE original are wonderful in isolation, but splicing this 3 minute track with the occasionally distorted percussion loops and radio samples of the 88 bpm Muslimgauze cut really elevates matters. The best blends work on a simple ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ basis. This one really nails it. Hopefully Knekelhuis press some more!

The dubplates are now sold out but you can buy the digital file at the Knekelhuis Bandcamp.