About "Clones & False Prophets":
Greeting heretics, etherics, clones and False Prophets,
Clones and False Prophets is the latest chapter in the Myth of Badawi, which now spans 8 years and 5 albums, but anyone who has listened to Badawi's music knows that it reaches far beyond its years. Like the heritage of its creator, Raz Mesinai, the Badawi saga bridges continents, musical styles and spiritual faiths into something sublime.
Clones and False Prophets is easily the most varied and dynamic Badawi release. There are elements of all four previous albums but also some differences. Perhaps most significant is that on Clones... Raz utilizes his increasing connection to NYC's downtown improvisational music scene based around the nightclub Tonic by drafting the following masters into his sonic army: Marc Ribot, Ben Perowsky, Doug Wieselman, Shahzad Ismaily & Carolyn "Honeychild" Coleman.
The musicians' unique improvisational personalities create opposing ideas within each song, which ends up serving as a musical treaty between all the ideas vying for power. So the listener, whether they be a heretic, etheric, clone or False Prophet, hears mighty forces negotiate terms & conditions, choose flags & uniforms, and stake their own musical territory. Or as Raz himself states, "create angles, lines and borders in what was once a circle."
The resulting album is as complex as it is rooted. One feels the tension beneath every note, constantly threatening to explode into violence. Occasionally it does. From the brooding opening of its first two tracks Clones... slowly gets more intricate as its rhythms build in complexity and fervor. The percussion and drums do something transcendent on "Enter the Tomb Raider". The players ride a wonderfully snaky guitar riff on "Atoning of the Myths". And it all explodes with "Battle Cry", which sounds like Middle East gone Krautrock. "Waves Of Conflict" is the albums last great struggle and "To Be Continued" ends Clones & False Prophets with the repetition of one word: "confusion". This is an album meant to be read into. This is the myth unfolding before your very ears.
About Raz Mesinai (AKA Badawi):
Composer, Musician, DJ and producer Raz Mesinai was born in Jerusalem in 1973 and was raised primarily in New York City. As a young child Mesinai was influenced by a wide range of experiences starting with the poetry of the Bedouins in the Sinai Desert, the Hasidic story's of Shlomo Carlebach, a Sufi ceremony led by Dervish Sheik Murshid Hassan, and the rising Hip Hop scene of New York City in the early eighties, all of which led him to perceive rhythm and sound as powerful modes of communication, and set him out to develop his own form of sonic storytelling.
In the early eighties, Mesinai began producing instrumental beats for break dancers and rappers in his elementary school in New York City with a drum machine purchased at a pawn shop for twenty dollars. He left this world behind when he returned to Israel for several years, becoming absorbed in religious studies in the ultra-Orthodox section of Jerusalem known as Mea Shearim. Several years later, Mesinai abandoned religious studies and again returned to New York, only to find that "music" all had changed. One day in a record store looking for instrumental rap records, the clerk suggested reggae instead and Mesinai discovered dub music.
Soon Mesinai was recording his own dub tracks under the moniker "The Bedouin" or "Badawi," and produced cassettes which he played on a boombox in the streets of lower Manhattan and sold to passersby. He began developing his use of the recording studio itself into a compositional tool, and produced some of his classic recordings with a 4-Track cassette and an echo chamber. While he was still a teenager, Mesinai also began to make a name for himself as a DJ. Gaining a following for his seamless integration of all musical styles, Mesinai began spinning in some of New York's most underground nightclubs, including Nylon, Mars, The RV, Save the Robots, Lime Light, Sound Lab, and The Pyramid among others. At the age of twenty Mesinai met veteran producer John Ward, and together they produced several recordings under the moniker "Sub Dub" (which are considered classics of the so-called "Illbient" scene). During this same time Mesinai himself produced the modern dub classic "Badawi Presents: Bedouin Sound Clash," featuring HoneyChild on vocals. Later came the "Badawi" records "Jerusalem Under Fire," "The Heretic of Ether" and "Soldier of Midian."
In the nineties Mesinai began gaining recognition in New York City's "Downtown" music scene for his avant-garde percussion, piano, string, and electronic compositions. He met and was influenced by composers John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, and Ikue Mori. In 2001 Zorn released Mesinai's most abstract album to date, of compositions inspired by the writings of Franz Kafka ("Before The Law") on his Tzadik label. The following year "Resurrections for Goatskin," another acoustic/electronic composition, came out on Tzadik imprint "The Composer's Series."
Today, Mesinai performs frequently across the U.S. and Europe, and collaborates regularly with many of New York's top musicians, including Eyvind Kang, Mark Feldman, Mark Ribot, Mark Dresser, Shelley Hirsch, and Zeena Parkins, among many others. His "String Quartet for Four Turntables" was commissioned and presented by the Lincoln Center Festival in 2000, and in 2001 Badawi: Soldier Of Midian (ROIR) received an award from Ars Electronica. In 2002 Mesinai performed for the second time in the Lincoln Center Festival, opening for revered Nubian musician Hamza El Din, and was a featured artist in the "Next Next Wave" portion of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave 2002 festival. His newest projects include "Clones and False Prophets" featuring Doug Wieselman, Marc Ribot, Shahzad Ismaily, Honey Child, and Ben Perowsky with a live tour expected for next year
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