---------------------------------------------------
ARTiST....: jan jelinek
TiTLE.....: tierbeobachtungen
LABEL.....: Scape
GENRE.....: ambient
SOURCE....: cdda
QUALiTY...: VBR / joint-stereo
SiZE......: 54,2 MB
REL.DATE..: 10-14-2006
---------------------------------------------------
01] a concert for television 08:04
02] palmen aus leder 07:12
03] the ballad of soap 07:42
04] up to my same old trick 06:36
05] happening tone 07:10
06] tierbeobachtungen 06:02
TOTAL TiME : 42:46 min
Recorded almost in transit, while preparing his
move to a new studio, the tracks reveal and relish
in their improvisational character, a drifting
lost in sound, yet never lose sight of their
underlying structure. "Tierbeobachtungen" might
constitue JELINEK'S freest and most personal work.
Simple arrangements with 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. And, not least of all, more than any
of his previous albums, "Tierbeobachtungen" picks
up on JELINEK'S live appearances.
Nevertheless, "Tierbeobachtungen" steers clear of
all animal emulations, does not succumb to the
myth of the wild and unfettered, but merely - as
the title implies - aims to observe. The tracksÆ
intoxication never exhausts itself in unbridled
expression - the observer's post, a level of
reflection, remains audible throughout. On the
other hand, this is by no means intellectual,
distanced music. On the contrary: 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 Duul, Cluster, My Bloody
Valentine - yet whatever musical memories might
vie for our attention, these are no clear-cut
references, just loose associations. JELINEK
side-steps the overly tangible.
All tracks pursue a common principle. They well up
slowly, a period of concentration, of taking
shape, followed by equally rapid dissipation. On
occasion, we 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. JELINEK'S tracks provide
tantalising glimpses of acoustic treasures from
faraway lands, without ever divulging their true
heritage. Similar to the pioneers of industrial
music, like Cabaret Voltaire or Zoviet France, who
back in the early 1980s 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, always a little cryptic, yet never
overly romantic. Overt romanticism is also
precluded by Jelinek's sense of humour, 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.
Since the 1990s JAN JELINEK has been working with
sounds as a musician, producer, using various
pseudonyms for his many projects. Releases under
his own name include the albums 'Loop-Finding Jazz
Records' (scape, 2003) and 'Kosmischer Pitch'
(scape, 2005), the latter a drifting loop vortex
peppered with subtle Kraut references.
Buy me if you love me :)