Album Notes

Bedouin Sound Clash was conceived and recorded in Raz\'s basement studio with a four track cassette recorder and a multivox echo chamber. Post production, pre-mastering and final digital mastering took place at WK Studios in Manhattan and ESP in Buffalo, New York. Although the record utilizes a new style of dub, it preserves an organic feel with reggae rhythms, analog sounds, and Egyptian and Bedouin percussion.
A highly experimental world music album that combines heavy reggae-influenced rhythms with Middle Eastern percussion, and the occasional female vocal. From Raz Mesinai, master dubber and percussionist, and one half of Sub Dub (Instinct Records/Asphodel Records).
Raz Mesinai (AKA Badawi) was born in Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine in 1973,and was raised in New York city. Because of a particularly diverse background Mesinai was influenced by all kinds of music especially by the prayers of Sufi Sheik Murshid Hassan, and Jewish story teller and musician Rabbi Schlomo Carlebach, as well as many others. As a child, he spent time in the Sinai Desert with the Bedouins, and later began studying rhythms of Persian, Indian, Yemenite, Moroccan, and Afro-Cuban styles learning a wide range of percussion instruments, including frame drums, the Zarb, the Darabuka, and the Bendir.
Raz is at the forefront of the NYC Academy of Underground DJs, featuring DJ Spooky, DJ Olive, Loop, Lucy, Soulslinger, and WordSound I Powa and is also one half of the influential Dub duo Sub Dub with John Ward. He is also a key founder of Rotor (a collective of composers focusing on the turntable as electronic instrument) with DJ Olive and Toshio Kajiwara. Through his work as a percussionist and composer at such vanguard NYC venues as Tonic, Knitting Factory and the now-defunct Cooler, Raz has increased his visibility as a performance artist and transcended his reputation as a DJ.

What the press had to say about \"Bedouin Soundclash\"

URB says:\"It is apparent just how integral Badawi is to New York\'s illbient scene - swinging the dub pendulum from dark and disturbing to tongue-in-cheek zaniness. He teases and mystifies us in the same spirit of Lee \'Scratch\' Perry.\"

NY POST:\"A high-powered blend of Middle Eastern and Jamaican music (dub).\"

OPTION:\"Raz Mesinai is a crucial member of New York\'s so-called illbient underground.
This deep dub excursion is probably the most musical outing yet from anyone associated with that scene - intoxicating and combustible.\"