Reviews of new releases from Muslimgauze and The Sopranos.   Various Artists The Sopranos: Music from the HBO Original Series (Play-Tone/Columbia) The Sopranos HBO 9 pm Sundays starting Jan. 16 www.hbo.com/sopranos Most films and TV shows dubiously use music like cheap gouache, a tonal smear that thickens the sonic base and adds texture without necessarily improving the overall picture. Occasionally, though, artists like Scorsese, Tarantino or the people behind HBO's subtly nuanced Mob series The Sopranos employ their chosen music as an invisible character providing color, contrast and depth. Yet even in their capable hands, the inevitable soundtrack albums can be problematic. When sound and scene intertwine to the point of near-sexual union, prying the music from its visual partner often renders it nearly impotent. Unfortunately, that's the case with The Sopranos' soundtrack, freshly released to coincide with the launch of the acclaimed epic's second season. On the show, songs weave into the plot like a skin graft; on the CD, the same songs become scabs looking for a body. It's not the fault of the musicians--Elvis Costello, Van Morrison, Los Lobos, Dylan, Sinatra and Springsteen each have as much distinctive personality as the fictional members of the Soprano clan. But without their filmic referents, they're lost in a goopy, purposeless mess. Only the groovy gospel-funk of A3's "Woke Up This Morning"--both the album's leadoff cut and the series' theme song--conjures concrete images of the onscreen action, and for a creation as memorable as The Sopranos, that is a mighty disappointment indeed. Leave your CD player empty and plug your stereo into the TV instead. John Graham   Muslimgauze Speaking With Hamas Soleilmoon/Staalplaat Of related interest: The Israel/Syria peace talks, the intifada If you think multiculturalism is an academic fiction, try this on for size: Muslimgauze, a dead Englishman known to his moms as Bryn Jones, releases a comp of a 1996 ambient electronica series, carried by Amsterdam's Staalplaat and Portland's own Soleilmoon. The music, a ghost-spooky admixture of mussein wails, rattling Middle Eastern drums and fin de siècle Euro electro-hiss, reflects Muslimgauze's didactic support for radical Palestinian nationalism. Yes indeed. This latest posthumous release from the very talented, spectacularly prolific and maddeningly obscure Jones--who died last year of a rare blood disease--is a chilling platter of music. Music, though, is barely the point. Speaking With Hamas is an indigestible soup of appropriated tribal politics, cross-cultural dementia and postmodern sonics. It bids hard and early for Weirdest Record of '00 honors, and it's a tough call whether it's a sterling success or an annoying failure. The ethereal songs, all scented with Levantine spice, bear titles like "Palestine is Our Islamic Land" and "Return of Black September." If you're wondering what stake the Anglo Muslimgauze has in the world's oldest geopolitical pissing match, his decidedly Western take on traditional Middle Eastern music won't tell you. Sampled Arabic voices rise from brooding fog with no translation and little context, competing with remixed calls to prayer and the electronic auteur's pops and whistles. Musically, you can't argue. Speaking With Hamas saws at the edges of a listener's consciousness, its eerie unintelligibility demonstrating the disconnect between Islamic culture and the secular West. Politically, though, it's willfully senseless. It's highly unlikely that any West Bank cadres will pack this product of the West's decadent musical culture for light listening on the next suicide bombing. So who is Muslimgauze trying to reach? Ah, yes--the CD's packaging announces that the album will be "permanently available to people who don't deserve it." Of course. That must mean all us imperialists. Right on, Comrade Gringo. Muslimgauze's haunting beyond-the-grave manifesto lays out a beguiling political labyrinth. The trouble is, there's no way out. Zach Dundas   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published January 12, 1999