Mute have announced the signing of Dearborn band Prostitute, whose 2024 debut Attempted Martyr will receive a long-awaited worldwide physical release ahead of a new European tour.
Originally released on a small independent run, Attempted Martyr has since accrued significant word-of-mouth acclaim (and an in-depth feature in these pages) for its incendiary mixture of hardcore punk, noise, and middle eastern music.
Mute’s new editition of the record is out on CD and two vinyl editions – a limited ‘Arabic edition’ on ‘Lebanese sunburst vinyl’ available exclusively through Dinked, and a red vinyl edition. All are released on 13 March and can be pre-ordered here. The band have also shared a new video for track ‘Mr. Dada’, which you can see below.
A European tour takes begins on 17 April in Liège, with UK stops taking in Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival, Brighton’s Green Door Store, two shows at London’s MOTH Club at the end of that month before finishing in May at Salford’s White Hotel and Glasgow’s Hug and Pint.
Based in Dearborn, Michigan, the town with America’s largest proportional Muslim population, Prostitute were frontman Moe and drummer Andrew, who co-write the band’s lyrics.
Said Moe: “I had an identity crisis, growing up, 9/11 started a lot of xenophobia and Arab hatred and all that kind of shit. I hated being Arabic. I hated Arabs in general, just because people were hating me. Through much of my 20s I felt like, ‘How about I be the character you want me to be?’”
Added Andrew: “When we started the album, the war in Gaza hadn’t begun yet,” says Andrew. “But the world was still pretty fucked up. It already felt like the car was going off the cliff, with no-one at the wheel. There’s an angst to the album. I’m not religious, but I’ve always been drawn to art and stories about religion – this yearning for transcendence, for an answer, for forgiveness. The album is about someone trying to transcend in some way. This character is reprehensible. But we’re not trying to tell anyone what to think. This isn’t some manifesto – this is art, it’s an outlet for things we were feeling.”
The new Mute edition of Prostitute’s Attempted Martyr is released on 13 March and is available for pre-order here.
