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LP
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FAITICHE 036LP
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Jan Jelinek's Social Engineering brings together thirteen text fragments from so-called phishing emails. Using speech synthesis, they are spoken, sung, and/or transformed into abstract textures. The result is a 36-minute language and sound collage devoted to the dark forces of phishing.
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FAITICHE 031LP
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One of the most notorious hatemongers in movie history is Captain Ahab from John Huston's 1956 classic Moby Dick. His manic monologues cast a spell on generations of viewers. Berlin based musician and sound artist Jan Jelinek has now turned the voice of Ahab into a musical instrument. Faitiche presents Jan Jelinek's soundtrack for SEASCAPE - polyptych, an audio-visual software developed in collaboration with Canadian new media artist Clive Holden in 2022. SEASCAPE - polyptych is based on image and acoustic source material from Moby Dick. While Holden works on manipulating film sequences, the voice of Ahab plays a central role in Jan Jelinek's soundtrack. The dynamic volume and tone of the captain's speech control a synthesizer system that turns Ahab's voice into ten abstract soundscapes. In this production the voice gives the impulse and controls things but is not the sound of spoken word itself that you hear. Only occasionally can snippets of speech be heard so that syllables or sounds are recognizable. Instead, you hear compositions made of hissing, soundscapes, and eruptive sounds. The atmosphere is dark and sinister. Still every piece has a clear sonic structure and follows an understandable dramatic composition. This music is abstract but not overwhelming. Quite the opposite, SEASCAPE - polyptych is an invitation to listeners to let themselves be carried by the stream of sonic events. Although part of a media art work, the soundtrack can be enjoyed without any of this connecting superstructure. It works with no previous knowledge. But what happens when one does know that it's the sonic waves of a human voice that is controlling a network of synthesizers? If you want to hear Ahab, you will hear a choir of Ahabs in every piece of sound. The subliminal threatening as well as the conjuring Ahab. Finally, the Ahab who whips up his crew and tears them with him into their downfall. The majestic "on the quay now, waiting and watching", the oppressive "drawn towards the whirlpools center" -- they are all music as well as sonic discourse. Includes download code.
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FAITICHE 024LP
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Faitiche releases an album version of the radio piece Vom Rohen und Gekochten (The Raw and The Cooked) originally composed and produced by Jan Jelinek for the state broadcaster SWR2. The album The Raw and The Cooked brings together five sound collages that deal with the consistency of material and its mutability. Solid, raw, boiling, powdery, liquid, broken and folded -- categories which describe the nature of material. They can also be read in a chronological sequence: solid becomes broken becomes liquid becomes powdery... Material tells of its essence as it drifts through its states, always in correspondence with external energies. The Raw and The Cooked observes the artists Thomas & Renée Rapedius as they design their paper and metal objects and the artist Peter Granser as he ritually prepares Japanese tea, it shatters glass, bends metal and burns wood. The resulting audio documents capture processes of material transformation as sound. The Raw and The Cooked was created with the help of ITO Raum Stuttgart and Thomas & Renée Rapedius. Originally produced for radio broadcast on Südwestrundfunk in 2020 it contains a variation of the collage "Zwischen/Raum" that was made with funding from Musikfonds. Includes download code.
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LP
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FAITBACK 007LP
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Repressed. Faitiche presents Jan Jelinek's album Tierbeoachtungen on vinyl for the first time, originally released on Scape in 2006. The album's six tracks took their cues from Jelinek's live concerts of that period: dense, slowly unfolding loop improvisations made with a laptop, various effect pedals, and miniature synthesizers. It is music that floats in a semi-conscious state between dream and awakening, always slightly mysterious, leaving traces that lead directly to the psychedelic-cosmic music of the kraut era. Includes download code.
In his release notes for Tierbeobachtungen at the time, the late lamented Martin Büsser wrote (2006): "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 album title provides a first hint of this development: 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 be 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 vibraphonette. 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 splendour 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. . . 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. (...)"
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LP
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FAITICHE 017LP
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2023 repress. Faitiche release a short version of the radio play Zwischen (German for "between"). Devised and produced by Jan Jelinek for German public broadcaster SWR2, Zwischen brings together twelve sound poetry collages using interview answers by public figures. Each collage consists of the brief moments between the spoken words: silences, pauses for breath, and hesitations in which the interviewees utter non-semantic sound particles. These voice collages also control a synthesizer, creating electronic sounds that overlay and merge with the voices to make twelve acoustic structures. We all know the speaker's fate: you falter, you mispronounce, there are breaks, silences, and false starts. This results in delays, a language noise compared by Roland Barthes to the knocks made by a malfunctioning motor. Such gaps can be disconcerting, standing as they do for a failure of the speaker's rhetorical skills. But what happens when they become a constitutive, poetic factor? Zwischen consists of twelve answers to twelve questions. The answers were all recorded in interview situations. From the speech of the interviewees -- all eloquent public figures -- the pauses are extracted and edited together. The result is a series of sound collages of silence. But this silence is deceptive, as it is only meaning that falls silent. What remains audible is an archaic body language: modes of breathing, planning phases, seething word particles in search of sense that can break out into onomatopoeic tumult or drift off into sonorous noise. In a further step, each of the twelve collages controls a modular synthesizer via its amplitude and frequency. Supposedly defective speech acts conduct synthetic sounds and the speakers regain their composure -- not via the spoken word, but through sound. The opening questions in the various interviews are answered by: Alice Schwarzer, John Cage, Hubert Fichte, Slavoj Zizek, Joseph Beuys, Lady Gaga, Ernst Jandl, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Marcel Duchamp, Friederike Mayröcker, Yoko Ono, and Max Ernst. Jelinek extends his thanks to Frank Halbig and SWR2. Includes download code.
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CD
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FAITBACK 001CD
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2021 restock. Faitiche presents this long-lost album on CD. Since 2003, Jan Jelinek's Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, originally released in 2001 on ~scape, existed only as a download. Includes two bonus tracks, "Moiré (Guitar & Horns)" and "Poren", B-sides from Tendency EP (2000).
"Don't be misled by the title, though for there isn't a finger-snapping rhythm bebop lead anywhere on the album. Instead, Jelinek chooses to explore the visual effect moiré - two shifting patterns creating an implied third dimension - in the audio realm." --Alternative Press
"The title acts as explanation for the studio technique that provided the basis for this album, snippets of other people's arrangements deconstructed through a sampler into loops and then splashed onto an audio canvas." --ATM
"Jelinek's sound evolved out of his dislike for (and inability to play) keyboards." --RPM
"Jelinek has abstracted his sources beyond recognition, looping his millisecond samples into flickering patterns of sonic moiré laid atop a dub techno framework. . . . Jelinek might as well have sampled a horn player's hissing intake of breath - it would have been 'jazz' enough for his purposes." --The Wire
"It's a perfect inversion of conventional music, a sonic negative. Everything that would typically be foreground is moved back or pushed off the screen altogether, and the flecks of sonic debris that would normally be covered by other sounds are left to carry the melody and rhythm." --Pitchfork
"All you need to know is that these onomatopoeic non-specific songs . . . are warm, paradisiacal creations." --NME
"Listen carefully and you'll hear textures slowly unfolding and mutating. Presuming you've not fallen asleep of course." --iDJ
"At times, it's all a bit dripping tap Japanese water torture; so sedentary it drowns in its own motionlessness" --DJ
"Loop-Finding-Jazz-Recordsis a genuine modern classic whose re-release is anything but a cynical mortgage repayment exercise. Consider this a second chance, then pretend you had it all along." --Boomkat
"I've been fortunate enough to see Jan Jelinek live once, at Tonic NYC (...) Wearing a black and white striped shirt, he looked like a nihilistic Charlie Brown." --beachsloth
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2LP
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FAITBACK 001LP
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2024 restock. Faitiche presents a long-lost vinyl album. Since 2003, Jan Jelinek's Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, originally released in 2001 on ~scape, existed only as a download. Now the album is available again on vinyl, as a double LP with two bonus tracks, "Moiré (Guitar & Horns)" and "Poren", B-sides from Tendency EP (2000).
"Don't be misled by the title, though for there isn't a finger-snapping rhythm bebop lead anywhere on the album. Instead, Jelinek chooses to explore the visual effect moiré - two shifting patterns creating an implied third dimension - in the audio realm." --Alternative Press
"The title acts as explanation for the studio technique that provided the basis for this album, snippets of other people's arrangements deconstructed through a sampler into loops and then splashed onto an audio canvas." --ATM
"Jelinek's sound evolved out of his dislike for (and inability to play) keyboards." --RPM
"Jelinek has abstracted his sources beyond recognition, looping his millisecond samples into flickering patterns of sonic moiré laid atop a dub techno framework. . . . Jelinek might as well have sampled a horn player's hissing intake of breath - it would have been 'jazz' enough for his purposes." --The Wire
"It's a perfect inversion of conventional music, a sonic negative. Everything that would typically be foreground is moved back or pushed off the screen altogether, and the flecks of sonic debris that would normally be covered by other sounds are left to carry the melody and rhythm." --Pitchfork
"All you need to know is that these onomatopoeic non-specific songs . . . are warm, paradisiacal creations." --NME
"Listen carefully and you'll hear textures slowly unfolding and mutating. Presuming you've not fallen asleep of course." --iDJ
"At times, it's all a bit dripping tap Japanese water torture; so sedentary it drowns in its own motionlessness" --DJ
"Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records is a genuine modern classic whose re-release is anything but a cynical mortgage repayment exercise. Consider this a second chance, then pretend you had it all along." --Boomkat
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CD
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SCAPE 041CD
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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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