Jan Jelinek - Tierbeobachtungen

My first taste of electronic musician Jan Jelinek is this, his most recent and least beat-oriented album. It's a soft but intricate example of the "warm noise" approach. The six colourful pieces here are based on a background of warm hiss and looped samples, often of acoustic instruments, with delicate little synth squeaks and twitters bubbling around the mix. "A Concert for Television" is perhaps the strongest of these, its glitchy samples looped at a gentle pace, like fabric being knitted from sound, over analogue sounds reminiscent of household appliances and traditional synth bleeps. One of the oddest-titled pieces of music in my library, "The Ballad Of Soap und: Die Gema nimmt Kontakt auf" is anchored by a loop in the unexpected form of a country-and-western ballad bassline, which finally dissolves into a mist of quiet synth scoops. A low-key but quite fascinating album.

June 3, 2008

7 out of 10

See blog entry: Warm Noise (3 Jun, 2008)

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