10/01/2006

Gramm - Personal Rock

(Click on the picture to download.)

Jan Jelinek is taking his cues from the micro house sound of labels like Kompakt, Force Tracks or Playhouse - especially its more ambient-leanings strains - as well as from the clicks & cuts and glitch techno approaches pioneered by the likes of Oval, Pole and Vladislav Delay and there's also more than a shade of Basic Channel/Chain Reaction/
~scape-like dubbiness. It's a case of innovation through adaptation: Jelinek doesn't so much invent a new musical vocabulary. Rather, he combines his influences in a highly idiosyncratic fashion and distills a distinct and fascinating sound from them.

In a way, Jelinek's releases as Gramm are halfway between his more abstract output under his real name and his relatively dancefloor friendly work as Farben. Personal Rock - Jelinek's first full length album - is tranquil, gentle and melancholy. It's full of skippy, fluttering micro rhythms composed of tiny glitches, clicks and static, the basslines are deep and droning, but house is constantly and explicitly present - not so much through four-to-the-floor beats, but more through the structures of hooks and riffs or typical filter effects. But it's a weirdly spectral and ghostly presence. Personal Rock mirrors the feeling of the rave-comedown: it's like coming home from a club just before it starts to dawn, the rush of dancefloor euphoria slowly ebbing to become a fading, yet still present memory, and you can still feel the basslines and the thumping beats pulsing through your body.

5 comments:

crybo said...

this is the kind of stuff I absolutely love. Got quite a bit of Jan's stuff and this is a great addition. Cheers.

square dancer said...

Hi crybo,

I'm quite a fan and so far Jan has never disappointed. Heard his new one, Tierbeobachtungen, yesterday and it's quite a departure: a very improvisational feel, very loose, simple structures, at times almost a bit psychedelic in a krautrocky kinda way. Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this - if you have any more releases from SOURCE records please post

Anonymous said...

Many thanks. I know Jan Jelinek but not Gramm. Even under Gramm, he still makes the sound I like.

viagra online said...

I could download this great album, it is so so good, Jan Jelinek is one of the most popular singers in the world, I have a little problem, I cannot put in my ipod the music the I was download.