AMG Review of Coup D'Etat/Abu Nidal

Ned Raggett
All Music Guide

The re-release of these two recordings, which had been long out of print at the time, brought some changes to what had been done before. The first side of Abu, the lengthy "Gulfwar," was left off entirely, while Coup's "Una Voca" was removed in favor of three other songs: "Tabula Rasa II" and "Tonton Macoutes II," sequels of sorts to the originals from Coup, and "Jarnail Singh," an otherwise unavailable song which, for the most part, gently lopes along to a nicely ambient background, right down to bird calls and other noises from nature. There's an odd little vocal/noise loop of a false ending to keep the listener a bit on edge, though! Meanwhile, the packaging was revamped to include a variety of new images from around the Muslim world.