Customer Reviews

Kosmischer Pitch

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Jan Jelinek has been a busy fellow the past couple of years, releasing not only two albums under his own name, but a couple more under pseudonyms (Farben, Gramm), and a collaborative project with the electronic jazz group Triosk. Of all his work to date, it's that latter project with the youngsters that I found the most impressive, as 1 + 3 + 1 was an impressive back-and-forth that played to the strengths of both parties involved, striking a nice balance between murky electronic jazz and loopy micro programming.

If all his previous work was his take on jazz music, then Kosmischer Pitch (Cosmic Pitch) finds him delving into another genre (Kraut and other "cosmic" music) for inspiration and the result is something more mystical and developed than any of his other previous solo projects. While it's true that the release isn't a dramatic departure from his earlier work, it is something that moves in a slightly different direction and because of the source samples involved, it has a different overall feel. "Universal Band Silhouette" opens the disc and it's easy to hear the slight changes as the track starts slow but builds steam with dense layering of synth sounds and even some filtered guitars, turning it into a delightful 'trance' track (without all the implications that that label entails).

"Lemmings And Lurchen Inc" is even more trippy, weaving little more than some mesmerizing melodies over one another in disorienting ways while "Vibraphonspulen" takes things down a notch, spiraling multiple chime layers into a gauzy, heady haze. Really, the whole atmosphere of the album is one of the reasons that it succeeds so well. While I felt that some of his earlier work fell into a bit of a rut in terms of sonics (mainly from getting stuck in the same loop over an over again), that issue actually plays to his advantage on Kosmischer Pitch, because most of the tracks are less focused on rhythm and the spacey overlapping loops only draw the listener in further.

One of the only real mis-steps on the album is "Im Diskodickicht," which warbles the same bass melody for the entirety of the track without changing things up sufficiently, but elsewhere Jelinek has found fertile ground for stretching space and time with his unique production style. The album opens with a bit more of a pulse and that pulse wears away even more as the album progresses, eventually leaving the listener in some sort of free-floating hammock of washes that certainly conjures up a dreamy landscape. My favorite Jelinek release yet.

(from almost cool music reviews)

The world of 'dreamy electronica' has been polluted by those better aimed at selling you a Volvo then actually taking you to a different state of being, but thankfully there are still talented and lucid minds like Jan Jelinek who actually does create music that makes your mind wander and washes away your moment in time. The sound is much warmer and organic sounding then the super click n' cut sounding Loop-finding-jazz-records he released a few years back. This time Jelinek seems to be going beyond creating an amazing surface sound (referred to as wallpaper in an earlier AQ review) and has created an album that actually seeps through walls and time and space and slowly melts into your ears. Highly Recommended!

Mark Teppo, Igloo Magazine (www.igloomag.com)
(11.29.05) Liberated by his escape from traditional compositional techniques with his 2001 release, Loop-Finding Jazz Records, Jelinek plugs into the ethereal vibrations of the cosmic kraut-rockers from the 1970s to create the infinitely resonating landscapes of Kosmischer Pitch. He applies trance's disregard for time and psychedelia's distain for space to dub-laced loops and organically evolving minimal noises, making tracks with their own perpetual motion. His technique is to build ambient soundtracks from old records, lifting loops from jazz phrases and cosmic plasmatics.

"Universal Band Silhouette" builds from a bubbling echo into a cathedral-filling wave of sound, a rubberized loop that bounces wildly back on itself. The five minutes of "Im Discodickicht" blossoms into a spiral galaxy of crescending loops; while the lugubrious bass of "Planeten In Halbtrauer" is a Hindu mantra against a backdrop of bells and skewed pitches. "Western Mimikry" approaches a recognizable jazz framework as a rhythm section forms from the frail loops and a guitar undulates around itself, frets bent backward like a piece of flexible flesh. The atmosphere is filled with the reverberation of reversed echoes as if each note of the guitar is spit back out by the monitors in a mirrored format. Jelinek builds half a song and then creates a duet by reversing the tape.

Kosmischer Pitch is a blur of sound, a transformative work which liberates the listener, via loops and recursion, from the static movement of a traditional piece of music. Time signatures and motifs morph through iterations and permutations into an ephemeral haze of transcendental exploration. "Morphing Leadgitarre Rückwärts," a song not out of place on a number of recent Kranky releases, is an endless wave of crackling dust and guitar tone that induces tantric trance states as it undulates through meditative plateaus. The vibrations of Kosmischer Pitch are etheric and phantasmal, and the effects are to illuminate the subjectivity of time. All things can be stretched and Jelinek warps more than sound on this record. Mark Teppo, Igloo Magazine (www.igloomag.com

Jan Jelinek's "Kosmischer Pitch" has several interesting tracks, but overall nothing great. Jan seems to basically just throw in lots of ideas into each song which sometimes work and sometimes don't. It's good stuff, but nothing really strikes you as a "great" song - everything is simply "good". This is definitely not for everyone, though, as it's quite an acquired taste (I also didn't like it the first time I heard - I had to hear it several times, so don't be discouraged). It's pretty good ambient music, actually, but besides that it doesn't hold much ground. Electronica fans should find this interesting. Recommended.

Highlights include:
the entire album!

Jan Jelinek continues his unique brand of loop-based with KOSMISCHER PITCH, although his new album leans more towards the ambient side -- the rhythms are much more subdued. The opening track, "Universal Band Silhouette," draws on accumulating post-rock guitar layers, while "Lemminge und Lurchen Inc." has a more icy electronic feel. Certainly, this album isn't as immediate as his previous works, but the drones of "Im Diskodickicht" and "Morphing Leadgitarre Ruckwarts" provide lulling beauty. "Western Mimikry" winds back and forth, mimicking nothing of the sort, but "Lithiummelodie 1" sounds more like a country-western, although filtered through the glitchy Jelinek we're used to, complete with record hiss and cut-and-paste guitar strumming. It's a new direction for Jelinek, one that's not entirely unwelcome.

This record expresses the more ambient side of Jan Jelinek. The beats are suttle, drifting in and out of the warm ambient tones I have come to love in his music. This is a great album.