mooz are: Amy Jarlett (drums & backing vocals), Jessica Marlowe (vocals & electric guitar), Paula James (cello, bass, electric guitar & backing vocals), Rasha Shaheen (bass, electric guitar & backing vocals).

Jessica Marlowe and her bandmates from her previous project mooz (1997 -2004) are re-releasing their two albums. mooz came to the attention of music lovers and critics through their intense live performances and experimental song writing. They were invited to play at events such as Ladyfest, Glastonbury and Edinburgh Fringe where they were able to attract a wider following.

The band has been features as part of a Bristol based event and app called ‘Everything is Music’, which launches on 23 April 2021. The band will be releasing their archive on the same day. For more info, please read on.

Jessica explains about the mooz reissues:

“We created 2 albums and have recently come together to archive the journey as we had no online presence and the music was no longer available for an audience. We wanted visibility and a document of our music and experiences as female artists.”

The albums will be embedded in a website that serves as an archive, as well as a resource for younger musicians:

“We are in the middle of creating a website that will document stories from our time in the Bristol scene with a hope that there might be a bigger purpose to help young bands particularly female bands, learn from our experience and understand the similarities and differences between the music industry then and now.”

About Everything Is Music, which is part of a UK initiative on creative digital placemaking, she says:

“Everything is Music will bring together the most important people and stories in Bristol’s musical history through an interactive map that will launch on 23 April this year. Audiences will have to go to specific, relevant locations to find stories and music that links to that place and access the content via their mobile. We are currently looking at placing over 200 pins across the city in order to make the hunt as rich and varied as possible. These pins will form the jigsaw of Bristol’s musical history. We hope this project is going to be a huge cultural event for the city and will be the first of its kind in the UK, we’re also hoping it will provide some much-needed musical adventure in the absence of live events.“

We will post an update once the EIM project and the mooz website are live. For now, you can listen to the mooz albums through the bandcamp links below.

Here is what music journalist Everett True said about their posthumous second album:

“You stupid bastards. You all went out and bought Radio 4 and Interpol records when you could’ve been succumbing to the sweet grooves of Bristol’s Mooz: atonal punk rock and the rhythmic splendor of ESG; four girls who understood that silence is a rhythm too. They started up sweet and ended up brilliantly sullen and abrasive; their dissonant disaffection and jazz-tainted refrains couldn’t have been further away from the populist cheerleader-ism of Yeah Yeah Yeahs if they tried. Strings got scraped. Voices got raised. Atmosphere got ladled. Mooz’s second – and final – album, My Property (Blood Red Sounds) was recorded in one afternoon as a CDR to flog at their final gig, and is a more brilliant documentation of the Careless Talk Cost’s Lives aesthetic than anything this side of Young People or Erase Errata (although Gullick would hate it). It features the layered harmonies and deep sarcasm of ‘Girl Watcher’: it has a song called PMT. There are bonus live tracks. Fingers are running down fretboards. Jeez! What more do you want? I’d place Mooz next to three, great unheralded bands from the early Eighties – The Transmitters, polital girl duo Toxic Shock and The Leopards (‘Strange Rhythmical Music’) – and say this once more for all those who weren’t paying attention and think Help She Can’t Swim provide a challenge: you stupid bastards. How could you let this go unnoticed? You fuckers.”