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CD
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FAITICHE 013CD
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Faitiche presents the release of Schaum by Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek. Since their debut Bird, Lake, Objects (FAITICHE 003CD, 2010), they have played improvised concerts around the world. Japanese vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita prepares his instrument with various percussion elements as well as metal objects and toys, while Jan Jelinek layers loops made using small-scale electronic devices. Schaum (German for froth or foam) is the duo's second album. Jelinek writing to Fujita about the album: "Dear Masayoshi Fujita, many thanks for the audio files. Your additional vibraphone recordings go wonderfully with the material we have already. Preparing the vibraphone with more percussion instruments was the right decision. Combined with my tightly woven synthesizer and sample loops, the result is a fragmented sense of space. I have taken the liberty of manipulating certain recordings. While listening through our improvisations, I noticed a tendency towards atmospheric sounds. I am almost tempted to call them tropical. This has strengthened my resolve to work with dense background textures - among others, I'm using material produced in connection with my radio pieces 'Kennen Sie Otahiti?' (2012) and 'Dialoge zur Anthropologie' (2013): artificial field recordings, jungle and rain forest settings that do not hide their staged, fictional character. As you know, I have long been obsessed with the tropics. This obsession involves a mental image of a specific quality of landscape: deliriously extravagant unstructuredness, hostile to life but also excessively productive. I am fascinated by the idea of installing clear minimalist forms amid such luxuriant tropical growth. Perhaps my image of the city of Brasilia is a good example. Corresponding to this, I would like to expand our liner notes to include a quotation from Robert Müller's novel Tropics, an expressionist travelogue published in Germany in 1915. It goes without saying that this work cannot be wholeheartedly embraced: its imperialistic fantasies of omnipotence and its 'master race' posturing, characteristic of that time and place, are, of course, intolerable. Tropics is fascinating as a nervous jungle phantasm that openly indulges in exoticism at the same time as deconstructing it. In this way, the main character's adventure becomes a journey into the subjective. It resembles a feverish inner delirium, exposing exoticism as a simulated, utopian perspective. What it boils down to is insubstantial, nothing but foam and froth. With best regards, Jan Jelinek" Comes in hard-cover book-style packaging.
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LP
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FAITICHE 013LP
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2020 repress. LP version. Faitiche presents the release of Schaum by Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek. Since their debut Bird, Lake, Objects (FAITICHE 003CD, 2010), they have played improvised concerts around the world. Japanese vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita prepares his instrument with various percussion elements as well as metal objects and toys, while Jan Jelinek layers loops made using small-scale electronic devices. Schaum (German for froth or foam) is the duo's second album. Jelinek writing to Fujita about the album: "Dear Masayoshi Fujita, many thanks for the audio files. Your additional vibraphone recordings go wonderfully with the material we have already. Preparing the vibraphone with more percussion instruments was the right decision. Combined with my tightly woven synthesizer and sample loops, the result is a fragmented sense of space. I have taken the liberty of manipulating certain recordings. While listening through our improvisations, I noticed a tendency towards atmospheric sounds. I am almost tempted to call them tropical. This has strengthened my resolve to work with dense background textures - among others, I'm using material produced in connection with my radio pieces 'Kennen Sie Otahiti?' (2012) and 'Dialoge zur Anthropologie' (2013): artificial field recordings, jungle and rain forest settings that do not hide their staged, fictional character. As you know, I have long been obsessed with the tropics. This obsession involves a mental image of a specific quality of landscape: deliriously extravagant unstructuredness, hostile to life but also excessively productive. I am fascinated by the idea of installing clear minimalist forms amid such luxuriant tropical growth. Perhaps my image of the city of Brasilia is a good example. Corresponding to this, I would like to expand our liner notes to include a quotation from Robert Müller's novel Tropics, an expressionist travelogue published in Germany in 1915. It goes without saying that this work cannot be wholeheartedly embraced: its imperialistic fantasies of omnipotence and its 'master race' posturing, characteristic of that time and place, are, of course, intolerable. Tropics is fascinating as a nervous jungle phantasm that openly indulges in exoticism at the same time as deconstructing it. In this way, the main character's adventure becomes a journey into the subjective. It resembles a feverish inner delirium, exposing exoticism as a simulated, utopian perspective. What it boils down to is insubstantial, nothing but foam and froth. With best regards, Jan Jelinek" Comes in hard-cover book-style packaging.
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12"
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FAITICHE 010EP
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This mini-LP is the third of four vinyl compilations that bring together a highly diverse range of Jan Jelinek's works -- including commissioned pieces, live recordings, collaborations with other musicians, as well as unreleased material from the past five years. Both titles on the A-side are live recordings of Japanese vibraphone player Masayoshi Fujita together with Jelinek. "Do You Know Otahiti?" is a two-fold collage combining unreleased material with fragments taken from a radio collage. "TOton" is a previously-unreleased track from 2009.
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LP
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FAITICHE 003LP
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2020 repress. LP version. The Faitiche label presents a collaboration between Berlin-based vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita and Faitiche label-head/electronic musician Jan Jelinek. Queried on his favorite word in the German language, Masayoshi Fujita will pick "getragen" for its semantic signifiers, its inherent sense of "expansive, deep, quiet and sombre." And yet, "getragen" leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Does this definition apply to Bird, Lake, Objects? Only to a limited extent. Compared to previous Faitiche releases, Bird, Lake, Objects is certainly the most "getragen" of them all. From a distance, these tracks seem rather introspective, cautious even -- and reflect the recording situation: deliberately pared down, reduced to a single microphone in space and a separate track for all other instruments -- each movement and action chronicled by the treacherous mike. This presented multiple issues and external influences during the recording process: fire engine screams, street noise and footfalls became part of the recordings and part of their improvisatory nature. Each movement required careful orchestration, fully aware of its irrevocable nature. Space itself was always present and an audible entity, except on "Stripped To RM" (recorded without a microphone or vibraphone track). This record is a contemplative, aural meditation combining washes of ever-expanding electronic crackles and pulses with the gentle, droning resonance of the vibraphone. Masayoshi prepared his instrument with pieces of metal, strips of foil and similar objects. The resulting new sounds, akin to distortions, help to expand the vibraphone spectrum without eroding the instrument's intrinsic character or even abandoning it altogether. Besides his extremely reduced and deliberate style of playing, it is this aural redefinition that makes Masayoshi Fujita's craft so remarkable. Masayoshi's wood prints on the cover and booklet of Bird, Lake, Objects present concise, abstract and monochrome landscapes that are a visual complement to this music.
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CD
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FAITICHE 003CD
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The Faitiche label presents a collaboration between Berlin-based vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita and Faitiche label-head/electronic musician Jan Jelinek. Queried on his favorite word in the German language, Masayoshi Fujita will pick "getragen" for its semantic signifiers, its inherent sense of "expansive, deep, quiet and sombre." And yet, "getragen" leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Does this definition apply to Bird, Lake, Objects? Only to a limited extent. Compared to previous Faitiche releases, Bird, Lake, Objects is certainly the most "getragen" of them all. From a distance, these tracks seem rather introspective, cautious even -- and reflect the recording situation: deliberately pared down, reduced to a single microphone in space and a separate track for all other instruments -- each movement and action chronicled by the treacherous mike. This presented multiple issues and external influences during the recording process: fire engine screams, street noise and footfalls became part of the recordings and part of their improvisatory nature. Each movement required careful orchestration, fully aware of its irrevocable nature. Space itself was always present and an audible entity, except on "Stripped To RM" (recorded without a microphone or vibraphone track). This record is a contemplative, aural meditation combining washes of ever-expanding electronic crackles and pulses with the gentle, droning resonance of the vibraphone. Masayoshi prepared his instrument with pieces of metal, strips of foil and similar objects. The resulting new sounds, akin to distortions, help to expand the vibraphone spectrum without eroding the instrument's intrinsic character or even abandoning it altogether. Besides his extremely reduced and deliberate style of playing, it is this aural redefinition that makes Masayoshi Fujita's craft so remarkable. Masayoshi's wood prints on the cover and booklet of Bird, Lake, Objects present concise, abstract and monochrome landscapes that are a visual complement to this music.
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