Pitchfork

A mold used in casting needs to be the precise spatial opposite of the desired object. If you want a piece of iron that looks like a human foot, you need a mold with empty space shaped like a human foot. It's obvious-- as the material is cast, matter becomes space and space becomes matter. This image comes to mind as I listen to Jan Jelinek's Loop-finding-jazz-records; this album is like hearing the mold used to cast proper pop. 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.

These thoughts came to me the first time I heard "Do Dekor," which I would swear is the negative image used to imprint the "AFX Fast Mix" of Seefeel's "Time to Find Me." The rhythm is just as relentless (and nearly identical, beat-wise), but Jelinek's percussion of choice is not drums or even a drum machine, but tiny rips of static pasted into place. Taking the same idea even further is "Them, Their" which uses a single microscopic click as a substitute for a snare drum, as the full bass outlines a funky rhythm a half tick from hip-hop, and dreamy out-of-tune keyboards seem lifted from some distant memory. It's so computerized it hurts. And yes, it's fucking gorgeous.

The title here is meaningless, a joke coming from a guy who named a track on one of his records (under his Farben alias) "Live at the Hollywood Bowl." Some of the noises here may well have been sourced from jazz records, but you'd never know it. Besides, the palette here is similar to Jelinek's last album as Gramm, even though the goals are quite different. Gramm's personal_rock (which you should definitely check out if this record interests you) was more intent on exploring Jelinek's microsound ideas in the context of 4/4 dance rhythms-- something Loop-finding-jazz-records only touches on with "Rock in the Video Age" and "Tendency." With these tracks, Jelinek works territory similar to Wolfgang Voight's Gas project, anchoring his amorphous textures with the familiar house groove. The bulk of Loop-finding-jazz-records is given over to a more idiosyncratic pulse, which sheds more light on what Jelinek is doing with his peculiar mixing ideas.

That Jelinek would create his deep anti-pop for Stefan Betke's ~scape label makes sense, as Pole is definitely the most apparent reference point. Though his ideas are similar to a degree, Jelinek has far surpassed Betke in terms of expressiveness. Among the current spate of glitch artists, Germany's Jelinek designs his tracks with an ear for emotion. Part of this comes from the textures he chooses, which veer toward the liquid and organic, and part of it has to do with the manner in which Jelinek operates. The natural inclination with music this minute and detailed is to pay very close attention to the individual sounds, and a palpable intimacy emerges from the listener's proximity. Call me what you will, but I find this album to be incredibly sensual. It's like lying naked in a bed of freshly washed flannel sheets, rolling back and forth, feeling massaged by every strand of cotton. This is the real digital love, baby.