~scape

scape16

		jan jelinek
la nouvelle pauvreté Jan Jelinek has always enjoyed the play with concept and consistency - in the reassessment of soul music phrases (as Farben), reduced flirtations with the dancefloor (as Gramm) or by shifting linear loop fragments on his first scape album "Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records" (Jan Jelinek). But the safe haven of abstraction is not one Jelinek feels compelled to seek shelter in - after a number of consistent and concept based works, a productive urge to create a heterogeneous album, with equally varied references and tracks, has now resulted in "La Nouvelle Pauvreté". Borrowed from a Belgian anti-fashion movement (who once countered the overladen 80s pompousness with deliberately angular, prudish creations) this term at the same time offers a consciously ambivalent description of the current state of electronic music, now that the ambition to create seamless albums around specific sounds or ideas has become both the corner stone and weak spot of a scene which, in this voluntary self-restriction, runs risk of maneouvring its own genre into an evolutionary cul-de-sac, a musical "Nouvelle Pauvreté" between critical reflection and positive re-invention or impoverishment and decline. In the search for depth and true pathos Jelinek turns his production tools into pure means - centre stage is again taken by the actual material. And for the first time in his musical career this substance is deliberately laid open: sources are no longer blurred, encoded or retouched, samples may betray their heritage,and even Jelinek's voice is allowed the part of an additional instrument. These sporadically interspersed vocal passages are without exception references to existing songs (by Stevie Wonder, Brian Ferry, Sun Ra and Throbbing Gristle) and to the pervasive banality of song lyrics - in this new context Jelinek turns these quotes into haunting formulae. While Jelinek's previous explorative and sampling excercises were based on black music, house or dub, he now supplements these with a segment of musical history new to his compositions - classic white rock, pop and folk. Playing with the means and structures of traditional music The Exposures act as his fictitious backing band, Jan Jelinek's Alter Ego and extended self, bolstered by the new, carefully introduced rock references. Very, very subtly the unheard is allowed to approach and slink to the front - almost orchestral in nature it sneaks up on us, this new poverty, and settles into the sexy jazz basement. Suffused with funky pelvic beats it then glides from a comfortable womb-like heat into sweaty hypnosis... to be released into fake live applause. Jan Jelinek stays true to himself. And moves towards us - with a light, easy spring in his step.