Badawi Clones & False Prophets
Master percussionist Raz Mesinai continues to stake out iconoclastic territory on his fifth Badawi album. […]
Master percussionist Raz Mesinai continues to stake out iconoclastic territory on his fifth Badawi album. Since 1996, he’s moved with furious inventiveness from illbient dub to ominous Middle Eastern exotica to drum-circle jams to horror-film scores. (Call him the Israeli-American Muslimgauze at your own risk.) Clones & False Prophets is Badawi’s post-rock move. Raz and New York ringers like guitarist Marc Ribot and drummer Ben Perowsky churn out cinematic, ceremonial pieces like a less aggro Savage Republic while retaining elements from past Badawi efforts. The Middle East’s violence, tension and melancholy still haunt Mesinai, but he’s found a new way to transmute them into art.