| Jan Jelinek

Central Berlin. Vinyl, wherever you look. With microscopic precision Jan Jelinek scours his never-ending archive for those fleeting moments, those in-between noises and beat fragments that often get lost between hookline and rhythm. With the sampler as his dissection tool he breaks down these micro fragments into intricate elements – production becomes the re-interpretation, re-formatting and blurring of original material.

Jelinek's love for music is deep-rooted. Barely five years of age the former resident of Darmstadt bought his very first record and became a great fan of dub and Lee Perry. Soon he swapped his bass for the simplest production equipment, discovered the attraction of a healthy dilettantism (forcing him to improvise) and, with house, a musical genre that allows reduction and emotion to co-exist.

Since 1998 Jelinek has taken his work to the public: split into the re-evaluation of phrases in soul music (as Farben), a reduced approach to the dance-floor (Gramm) or, under his third pseudonym which strictly speaking isn't one (Jan Jelinek), the exploration of his own production concepts, he has so far released six Farben Eps on Frankfurt-based label Klang Elektronik (recently compiled on the album Textstar), followed by a Gramm album on Move D’s Source Records and, as Jan Jelinek, with loop-finding-jazz-records (~scape) the shifting of linear second loops, condensing Jazz samples into arrangements with an unrivalled depth of field.

Nowadays surrounded by technology of every kind Jelinek nevertheless still sees it as a simple means to an end – his music cites the sampling source, not the production platform employed. Whether as Gramm, Farben or under his own name: he always blends fresh approaches and sources into a distinctly new, very personal sound.

On La Nouvelle Pauvreté for the first time he deliberately reveals his sampling sources - even Jelinek's voice is allowed appear as an additional instrument. Playing with the means and structures of traditional music The Exposures act as his fictitious backing band, his Alter Ego and extended self, bolstered by new, sparingly employed rock references.

This dalliance with context, concept and consistency re-surfaces in various remixes, collaborations and compilation contributions. Equally diverse are his live requests from all over the world – from performances and installation scores (various exhibition openings as well as the soundtrack for the Expo 2000’s multi-medial youth pavilion) to straight-forward club appearances: with his subtle, danceable grooves Jelinek redesigns environments, often accompanied by VJs and video artists (Visomat, Sebastian Kutscher and Aaron Day) to visually offset the traditionally static laptop performance.

Jelinek will continue to explore this relationship between music and visuals, together with a number of artists like Sarah Morris (ICE Compositions as part of the EN/OF series on Bottrop-Boy), Inna Todisko (responsible for the artwork on La Nouvelle Pauvreté) as well as programmer and video artist Karl Kliem. With the latter Jelinek has developed an audio visual performance to generate synchronised graphics to the music.