Jan Jelinek

Jan Jelinek’s works deal with the transformation of sounds, translating source materials from popular music into abstract, reduced textures. Bypassing traditional musical instruments, he constructs collages using tiny sound fragments from a wide variety of recording devices: tape recorders, digital samplers, media players, and the like. The recordings are processed into repetitive loops that boil the original down to its essentials, the source material becoming indecipherable in most cases.

Jelinek began releasing his work in 1998, initially under the pseudonyms Farben and Gramm. In 2000, his sound collages played in the Young Media Pavilion at the EXPO2000 world’s fair in Hanover. In 2007, with Andrew Pekler and Hanno Leichtmann, he founded the improvisation trio Groupshow that refuses any repertoire and any limitation on performance duration. In 2008, Jelinek established the faitiche label as a platform for his own experiments, for joint projects, and for work by musician friends. Since 2012, Jelinek has been writing and producing experimental radio pieces for state broadcaster SWR that deal with fictional identities and soundscapes.