Jan Jelinek Hub Tierbeobachtungen

• Words: Cameron Macdonald
• Label: ~scape
• XLR8R Rating: 7/10

Jan Jelinek’s best loops find humanity in the machine. He extracts the richest milliseconds from simple tones–a note from a jazz organ or a guitar’s hum–and loops them without falling into numbing redundancy. This MP3-only release has his post-techno compatriots remixing such loops from his underrated Tierbeobachtungen album and launches them in brilliant and sometimes baffling directions. Thomas Fehlmann and Frank Bretschneider’s dusk-lit guitar textures and drones treat Jelinek’s most evocative moments as engines for Autobahn trips. In the other corner is Andrew Pekler and Hanno Leichtmann’s digital cut-up of feedback, crowd chatter, and jagged tones. Ah, the things humans do to machines.