Walking In Jerusalem

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'Walking in Jerusalem' is Sebastien Meissner's second tour through the holiest/unholiest city in the world. On 'Jerusalem: Tales Outside the Framework of Orthodoxy' (Ritornell), he evoked the division of the city into Jewish and Arabic with a wall of silence midway through. This time, he has both allowed all sounds to mix and mesh, as well as sharing space on the record with other electronic musicians like Tim Hecker, Electric Birds and the Rip-Off Artist, providing their own versions of the aural archive Meissner has so meticulously compiled.

Perhaps the blending of Jewish and Palestinian musical styles with field-recorded street sounds is Random Inc's answer to his own question as to how to bridge the chasm between these two groups. In pairing them up rather than distinguishing them from one another, the myriad similarities between the cultures become evident, getting stuck together by the glue of the rhythmic pulse and dub textures of Meissner and his collaborators.

Furthermore, unless laptop manipulations have rendered them unrecognizeable, no synagogue chants or calls to the faithful from the minarets are to be heard - this is the profane, not the sacred, Jerusalem, the Jerusalem which is not only the centre of the world, but a town that must live and breath and buy and sell. Hence the visits to the market of Mahane Yehuda (with Dub Taylor) and a pause on the steps leading down to the Damascus Gate, bus stations and radio stations, but nary a meuzzin or rabbi in sight.

Even strictly politically, Random Inc leaves well enough alone, with the exception of a visit to Deir Yassin with Ultra-Red, site of a Jewish terror group's slaughter of innocents in the forties. From the text extract accompanying the piece, we learn interestingly that the revulsion of the Chief Rabbi at the time was so great that he excommunicated the participants.

This moving, challenging, and reflective work, a "must-have" complement to Random Inc.'s equally innovative initial venture into Jerusalem, has been released simultaneously with a vinyl-only version geared to make the listener whirl like a dervish on the dancefloor. The double vinyl housed within the attractive packaging includes further guests, including microglitchy Swedes Andreas Tilliander and Michael Stavöstrand.