Browse by Artist: JELINEK, JAN

Artist:	JELINEK, JAN
Title:	Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records
Label:	SCAPE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	SCAPE 007CD

Classic 2001 release, repressed. "Specific ideas require specific labels. Jan Jelinek releases a new album on the Stefan Betke/Pole-label ~Scape and we welcome a new concept: 'loop-finding-jazz-records'. Jan Jelinek? You know, the production link no 1 between SND and Blaze, the human sound poetry generator any computer, be it Amiga or the Mac Cube, would be honoured to work with. With the aid of his sampler Jelinek has developed an exclusive music discovery approach, building on three central themes: jazz, the loop finding modulation wheel and moiré. Jazz sequences from the '60s and '70s are cut up into second-long loops, shifted by the wheel of the sampler and combined into spacial arrangements with maximum depth of field, re-creating the notorious moiré-effect, this ground-breaking painting technique of creating three dimensional space in a plane without the classic tools of perspective. When Vasarély slightly tilted a few lines in a square grid it seems to flicker three-dimensionally. Similarily, when Jelinek uses his modulation wheel to twist linear loops, sounds dance into zero gravity. It´s just a little twist for Jelinek´s index finger and a large step for the grammar of crackle poetry. Should anyone enquire after the lyrical scope of clicks and cuts and glitches, 'loop-finding-jazz-records' will overwhelm them like Jericho's trumpets. The more gentle, the more insistent. And the initial concept will be forgotten amongst excited listening surprise."

Artist:	JELINEK, JAN
Title:	Avec The Exposures
Label:	SCAPE (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$8.50
Catalog #:	SCAPE 014EP

"Jan Jelinek celebrates. He celebrates the discovery of straightforward directness. No more abstract concepts, no more hide-and-seek between glitchy hisses. Jan Jelinek invents Jan Jelinek. This is music like a passport picture, a full-frontal approach. Exposures. New contours emerge. If his Farben series was a paraphrased homage to soul, 'Jan Jelinek - Avec The Exposures' stretches from quiet smoulders to a Brazilian exuberance that catches us unawares -- but on the right footing. How present and movement-inducing his music can be! Of course, Jelinek stays Jelinek and his crackling exploration of limbo states remains just that. But the evolutionary leeway lent to melodies and bass grooves is enormous, samples unashamedly betray their heritage. On 'Jan Jelinek - Avec The Exposures' sources are no longer anonymised in his atomiser, they are allowed to colonize the dancefloor as fully-fledged characters. With Jelinek in the middle. And his reaction? He sings, sings happily to himself."

Artist:	JELINEK, JAN
Title:	Kosmischer Pitch
Label:	SCAPE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	SCAPE 032CD

Jan Jelinek (aka Farben, Gramm), is perhaps the leading German click-house/electronica artist and the most well-known producer within the experimental electronic music scene. This is his third album for ~scape. Back in the heyday of Krautrock people often talked of "cosmic music." Bands like Popol Vuh began to experiment with early Moog synthesizers, Holger Czukay's Can aspired to a "plasmatic sound," and the era was awash in sound blurring, flow -- a musical haziness of sorts, perceived as a transcendental moment, with the pioneers of electronic music on a quest for liberation. Airy vibrations instead of earthy rock. Jan Jelinek's new album Kosmischer Pitch (Cosmic Pitch) holds plenty of allusions to this era. Jelinek decided to work with loops and layers the outcome of which really does sound "plasmatic" and ties in with the drifting sounds of the early seventies -- not by way of recycling, but by reconstructing a certain mood. This album is all about tranquility, submersion in sound, and long-lasting tracks, drawing on the rationale of those variants of modern music deliberately unconstrained by the song format: whether it be La Monte Young's minimalism, psychedelia or deep house -- all these aural forms of expression circumvent any conventional sense of time. The "Pitch" referred to in the album title exploits this premise of rising above time and refers back to the arrangement idea of "wild pitch" deep house with tracks that are resplendent with layers and intensity. By transforming this basic principle of drifting into something audible -- his music, albeit blurred, has always been transparent, hiding nothing. Jelinek forges a new connection: from Conny Plank's studio, the master console of early '70s electronica, to Detroit and back. Moreover, Kosmischer Pitch is the exact opposite of retro, deliberately omitting references to a specific time or place for vibrations that defy localization.

Artist:	JELINEK, JAN
Title:	Kosmischer Pitch
Label:	SCAPE (GERMANY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	SCAPE 032LP

LP version, deluxe gatefold sleeve. This is the best electronic music album of 2005.

Back in the heyday of Krautrock people often talked of "cosmic music." Bands like Popol Vuh began to experiment with early Moog synthesizers, Holger Czukay's Can aspired to a "plasmatic sound," and the era was awash in sound blurring, flow -- a musical haziness of sorts, perceived as a transcendental moment, with the pioneers of electronic music on a quest for liberation. Airy vibrations instead of earthy rock. Jan Jelinek's new album Kosmischer Pitch (Cosmic Pitch) holds plenty of allusions to this era. Jelinek decided to work with loops and layers the outcome of which really does sound "plasmatic" and ties in with the drifting sounds of the early seventies -- not by way of recycling, but by reconstructing a certain mood. This album is all about tranquility, submersion in sound, and long-lasting tracks, drawing on the rationale of those variants of modern music deliberately unconstrained by the song format: whether it be La Monte Young's minimalism, psychedelia or deep house -- all these aural forms of expression circumvent any conventional sense of time.

Artist:	JELINEK, JAN
Title:	Tierbeobachtungen
Label:	SCAPE (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	SCAPE 041CD

The follow up to his highly acclaimed and successful album Kosmischer Pitch from Jan Jelinek, the leading German producer within the experimental electronic music scene. Kosmischer was a drifting loop vortex peppered with subtle Kraut references, and this is the perfect continuation of that highly developed acoustical matrix. The animal is experiencing a renaissance in music. It provides a reflective surface for our notion of the unbridled and irrational, of that Other the philosophers Deleuze/Guattari -- as part of their "Animalisation" -- called the embodiment of artistic deliverance. And yet, how much of a liberation can art actually tolerate? To what extent can music truly throw off its fetters without descending into chaos? Jan Jelinek's new album title provides a first hint of this development: like the above, Tierbeobachtungen (animal observations) is his fourth album for ~scape, and it addresses the issue of release and liberation. Recorded almost in transit, while preparing his move to a new studio, the tracks reveal and relish in their improvisational character, and drifting, lost sound -- yet, they never lose sight of their underlying structure. Tierbeobachtungen might constitute Jelinek's freest and most personal work, with simply arranged tracks based on four to five layered and modulated loops, while his own studio equipment provides the main sampling sources, from synthesizer and guitaret to vibraphone. Jelinek takes on the role of observer on this record, with a level of reflection remaining audible throughout. However, this is by no means intellectual, distanced music -- Jelinek leads us straight into a thicket, an acoustic jungle where sumptuous splendor meets the uncanny. A long tradition of psychedelic music pervades the recordings -- Amon Düül, Cluster, My Bloody Valentine -- yet whatever musical memories might vie for our attention, these are no clear-cut references, just loose associations. On occasion, one might even be tempted to take them for field recordings -- gems discovered, stored and returned from their travels by ethnologists fifty or a hundred years ago. Similar to the pioneers of industrial music, like Cabaret Voltaire or Zoviet France, who experimented with field recordings to challenge Western listening habits, Tierbeobachtungen takes us to new, unknown territories and brims with sounds that defy geographic or stylistic classification, not unlike the semi-conscious state between dream and awakening. Overt romanticism is also precluded by Jelinek's sense of humor, which rears its head in titles like "Palmen Aus Leder" (palm trees of leather) and prevents us from taking the album's mystic overtones too seriously.

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