Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Muqata’a is an electronic musician and MC based in Ramallah, Palestine. As well as previously composing film scores and soundtracks for dance performances, the Ramallah Underground Collective co-founder and Tashweesh member has released four solo albums of glitch and hiphop productions that incorporate personal field recordings and historical samples. Here, to mark the release of his fifth album كَامِل مَنْقوص Kamil Manqus, the artist shares a new mix and talks about some of the ideas and processes behind his latest release.
What first inspired you to make glitch music and what significance does the process of sampling and collaging sound hold for you?
Sampling for me has been a process of tapping into a kind of collective memory and producing new meanings and sounds from them. The systematic erasure of my communities past and present is what drives me to dig into these memories. Somewhere in that search, as errors and glitches appear, I began working with them as productive elements in concept and in form.
كَامِل مَنْقوص Kamil Manqus is your fifth album. How has your work and practice adapted since you first began releasing music?
It is a learning process, more than anything really. I feel like I am always adapting new techniques and sounds, inspired by all the powerful music that is being released currently. I don’t force it, it just finds its way in.
The album’s title translates as Whole Imperfect or Perfect Imperfect. Can you explain the relationship between the title and the album’s tracks? Are there any other themes present?
I see the tracks as steps in a search for some sort of hidden truth, a pursuit of the perfect memory. Starting from “Quboor Mamilla”, which is an ancient graveyard in Jerusalem that Israeli authorities have destroyed to build a fancy mall, park and, ironically, The Museum Of Tolerance. The last track of the album is “Ikmal”, which means completion, but also means unfinished, depending on how the word is used. And “Ikmal” comes from the word Kamil. “Simya’” is not exactly another theme, but it's a method of reaching what is beyond the material world to be able to follow these steps/tracks, but it is never completed.
The track “سِيميَاء Simya” (which refers to an ancient practice that attempts to communicate with the unseen) employs eerie-sounding samples, creating an uncanny undertone – how important is mood and atmosphere in your productions? What is the significance of referencing this ritual?
Making music, in a way, is therapy to me, so I am always trying to express something or let something out. Also, I use a lot of field recordings and they give the music a sort of setting. I feel like the mood and atmosphere come from these things. So they are quite important in bringing out the general feeling. Simya [is] an ancient spiritual science [that] is being used here to communicate with our ancestors, in an impossible task of trying to create a complete image of the past. Their voices appear throughout the album, and specifically on this track.
Memory and history are very involved in your practice. Do ideas about the future also play a part?
Yes, but more in a time travel sense. So thinking of time in a non-linear way. Searching through and producing patterns and errors from the past and present but manifesting them as some kind of future unrealised time, which opens up the possibilities for a new way of being or existing.
Tracklist
Muqata’a “Unreleased”
Cinturon Negro “Inoperante”
Beas “El Wa8d El Dal”
HXE “Worm”
Piezo “Amore Tossi”
Muqata’a “Unreleased”
Ra x MRF13 “Taayeh”
Abu Lahab “Rough”
Tegh “Heat”
Muqata’a “Simya’”
Nicole Mitchell & Moor Mother “Vultures Laughing”
Tarxun “Reincarnate In Digits”
Dakn “.a body in post trauma”
¡help! “lonely woman”
Julmud “Unreleased”
Kutmah “New Appliance”
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Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
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