jan jelinek

Since his early childhood, Jan Jelinek’s life has centered on music, collected records and immersing himself in their seductive sound. In love with the unique, genre-specific sounds of dub, jazz, funk and soul, it took the discovery of house music to trigger his own musical awakening: he discovered a new, playful approach to his musical knowledge, allowing him to distil those special sounds without stooping to straightforward recycling. Instead, Jelinek’s approach is all about the transformation of sounds, about devising a method for translating the pathos of old Motown records or the excesses of funk into abstract, reduced electronics. At this point in time he also began to work with loops, with slight modulations that convey the gist of a piece of music, even help to define it more clearly, yet mask the actual source.

Since 1998, Jelinek has been releasing records under a number of pseudonyms, adaptations of a method with surprisingly different outcomes. The evolution of a specific signature sound without the constraints of auto-repetition. While Gramm stands for pulsating minimal Electronica, Farben explores the reinterpretation of soul by dissecting Jelinek’s record collection and rearranging it in subtle variations: Frankfurt-based label “Klang Elektronik” published a total of seven different Farben EPs, (later re-released as the “Textar” compilation) - a play on the German term “Klangfarben” (timbre, literally “colors of sound”) and a subtle translation of the originally painstakingly arranged music into completely purified, yet no less precisely arranged, even danceable soundscapes.

2001 saw the release of „Loop Finding Jazz Records“(~scape), Jelinek’s first record under his own name, based, as the name implies, on old jazz recordings. Again, the source material was stripped relentlessly, often reduced to no more than its unique, ambient sound. After Jelinek’s treatment, the original arrangements were no longer audible, but transformed into mere acoustic situations, turning the sound medium into an instrument in its own right. In this, Jelinek tilted the spotlight away from the musician to the production process per se: what do we hear when our ear moves away from the notes? »La Nouvelle Pauvreté« (~scape, 2003) marked an astonishing shift towards transparency - for the first time in Jelinek’s career, he chose to reveal discernible quotes from rock music, without ever succumbing to rock itself. To this end, Jelinek invented a fictitious backing band, The Exposures, and thus questioned the supposition of music as a collective process. How many times can a person reinvent himself? For this project, his sampling sources encompassed everything from Brian Ferry to Sun Ra. And, for the first time, he made it possible, yet not essential to identify specific samples, while the music remained abstract enough to avoid any live band connotations. Even the (canned) applause could be considered an acoustic citation, albeit only to highlight the artificiality of the band set-up. With “Kosmischer Pitch” (~scape, 2005”) Jelinek now returns to his roots, yet, at least in part, avails himself of almost baroque, exuberant gestures: in his quest for the music’s basic harmonic principle, he layers his “cosmic” sounds more strongly than ever. “Minimal” and “opulent” are no longer a dichotomy: while their acoustic space seems very expansive, it is by no means over-crowded.

Berlin-based Jelinek is a tireless DJ, musician, producer and remixer. He collaborates with artists like Sarah Morris and author Thomas Meinecke, performs club live sets on his laptop as Farben or collaborates with improvisation ensembles like the Japanese trio Computer Soup and Australian jazz formation Triosk (see also their joint ~scape release, Triosk meets Jan Jelinek “1 + 3 + 1”, 2003). After a successful Australian tour and a number of European shows in 2004, Jelinek and Triosk have now planned a string of concerts for 2006. “Kosmischer Pitch”, too, will be aired as a trio. Together with multi-instrumentalist Andrew Pekler (known to many by his alter ego Sad Rockets) and drummer Hanno Leichtmann (Static, White Hole, VSQ) he aims to establish a dynamic balance between group improvisation and an adequate representation of the album. Furthermore, during the last few years Jelinek has intensified his collaborative efforts with video artist and programmer Karl Kliem. As part of their audiovisual performance Kliem generates synchronized graphics to Jelinek’s music. A DVD release is in the planning for next year.

In all his various guises, Jelinek’s attitude to music has always been and remains unfettered by stylistic constraints, but targets the style-encompassing essence of specific sounds. This equally sensuous and – from a style and epoch-defined pop perspective – abstract approach corresponds to its interdisciplinary counterpart: when it comes down to it, Jelinek is always striving to vanquish hierarchies. (Martin Büsser)