Jan Jelly-neck Andrew Pekler

I think one thing this experiment is teaching me is that on the whole there is a pretty clear relationship between how much I like music and how often I listen to it. Who would have guessed.

Jan Jelinek/Triosk 1+3+1 - Pretty good - Triosk at this stage in their lives may have been worshipping JJ and I think that it's a safe bet to say that this record is largely his ideas, with Triosk acting as the vehicle. The best tracks don't have walking bass.

I didn't really know what to make of Kosmischer Pitch - I remember bringing it with me when I went to Calgary in 2005, and riding around on the LRT listening to it and not feeling connected to it. It is a definite change from Jan's earlier work, gone is the house angle, and the texture is king. It took me another year before I got it - one evening I had it on as background ambience whilst reading a stack of papers for school and then I noticed that Morphing Leadgitarre Rückwärts was silky goodness, and I think I listened to the track 3 times in a row before sticking the album on repeat for the rest of the evening. It's warm, it has rhythm, but instead of pounding, it's more like an indentation on the textures, and it does krautrock.

Same goes for Tierbeobachtungen - the further Jan takes it, the more beautiful his guitar textures get - it's the same ideas that he got out of his jazz samples on the earlier stuff, but with live instrumentation. It is a bit shoegazey, but without sounding like other shoegaze records. And there's a western Morricone thing going on.

The Exposures Lost Recordings is a little EP JJ put together for Prefuse 73's label, it's quite a bit like Nouvele Pauvrete, but a bit looser, and it doesn't morph its samples into unrecognisability. Not essential, but certainly worth a listen. Like Flanger, Jan shows his (Germanic ?) love of the fake back story, claiming the Exposures were a group that did music for TV in Germany.

In conclusion: I hope you enjoyed reading about Jan Jelly-neck as much as I enjoyed listening to him.

Andrew Pekler has 4 records out, they're all quite good - definitely falling into the ~scape axis. Station To Station is his first for the label, and it is perhaps unfairly ignored. It does the jazz-influenced micro-house really well, and incorporates sampled live instrumentation in ways that St. Ettiene or Thievery Corp couldn't even begin to dream of. There are some lovely themes and textures that make the album more than classy background music.

Nocturnes, False Dawns, And Breakdowns drops the structures of Station To Station in favour of miniature pieces that have the feel of snippets of 70s fusion records. It may in fact be the case that the tracks on the album are composed from samples of 70s fusion records... Whatever the process, the result has great textures and mood, but I don't know if it has great pieces. At least it bears revisiting, once my journey is complete.

Strings And Feedback - I can't bring myself to like this one. It's made up of samples from Morton Feldman records, and these things (electronic musician takes on classical composer) always just sound amateur to me. Think stock horror movie soundtrack.

Cue - I like this record, but it reminds me of Jan Jelinek's last two records. This makes sense when you consider that Pekler has been Jelinek's on-tour guitarist for the last couple of years. You will enjoy it, but you will enjoy it a lot more if you ignore the library music descriptions of the pieces, which are naff.