Artist: Groupshow
Title: Greatest Hits
Cat#: faitiche 29
Release: Jan 27th 2023 (digital single: Nov 25th 2022)
Format: LP/DL

Faitiche presents Groupshow’s Greatest Hits: The ten tracks on this first vinyl album by Groupshow (Hanno Leichtmann, Andrew Pekler, Jan Jelinek), recorded between 2005 and 2018, document concert recordings and studio improvisations by the trio.
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In improvisation there are no mistakes, only missed opportunities. Groupshow found their first opportunity in the routines of live performance and they used this opportunity to break with these routines. The trio consisting of Jan Jelinek, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler came together in the context of Kosmischer Pitch, playing live versions of the music from Jelinek’s 2005 studio album of that name. During this project, the musical interaction between the three participants quickly emancipated itself from the original programme, departing from fixed roles and finding a distinct form in constant change.
Groupshow sessions – rehearsal, concert or recording – are always improvised. The interplay of the various sound sources, converging from the directions of “electronics”, “percussion” and “guitar”, does not follow the Krautrock wave logic of crescendo and morendo. Jelinek, Leichtmann and Pekler have established a method of transparent density in which links and breaks are not concealed but remain audible. The music works through attraction and repulsion, with a loosely organized structure that always leaves enough room for the next intervention.
The principle here, repeated even in the smallest units, is that of duration. Groupshow think of their music in terms of an installation: no starting point, no dramaturgy, and ideally no end. Concerts take place not raised up on a podium, but in the middle of the room on a level with the audience, who only enter the space with the musicians and instruments once their interaction is already underway. In 2008, Groupshow used this approach to create a live soundtrack for Andy Warhol’s film Empire, over the full length of eight hours and five minutes.
Recordings in general and the “Greatest Hits” format in particular are another key aspect of this ongoing work on a collectively modulated continuum. The ten tracks on this first vinyl album by Groupshow, recorded between 2005 and 2018, document the ephemeral capturing of opportunities that were not missed. Extracts and essences of an endless movement of searching. The sprawling form of the whole, suspended in succinct, separate units.
To paraphrase Lao Tzu and Roland Barthes, one might say: Once their work is done, they are no longer attached to it. And because they’re not attached to it, it will remain. (Arno Raffeiner, 2022)

Groupshow: Music For A Plank Press

Artist: Eli Keszler, Roméo Poirier
Title: Remix + 1
Cat#: faitiche 28+
Release: Jan 13th 2023
Format: DL

Roméo Poirier adds another track to his last year's album Living Room: "Les encombres" is anything but what the title suggests. A compelling addition to Roméo's mysterious cabinet of curiosities. 
Eli Keszler remixes "Statuario" - the album's opening track - and transforms it into an atmospheric setting that seems to have sprung from a magical vaudeville act.
Written and produced by Roméo Poirier & "Statuario" remixed by Eli Keszler, artwork by Tim Tetzner, mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.

Roméo Poirier, Eli Keszler: Statuario (Eli Keszler Remix)

Artist: Muellie Messiah & Punk Not Punk
Title: Exq I
Cat#: faitiche 30
Release: March 3rd 2023
Format: LP/DL
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpbisn5TAC8

Faitiche presents the album Exq I by Berlin underground techno legends Muellie Messiah & Punk not Punk, mainly known under their 100Records moniker. Weighing in at 36 minutes, the track was recorded in 2010, effortlessly intermingling dub, drone and collage, a blend achieved thanks to the duo’s jazz-inspired approach to improvisation.

100records is one of the last undiscovered treasures of the Berlin underground of the 1990s and 2000s. Like Elektro Music Department, 100records is unthinkable without techno and the club scene, but with a few exceptions the duo’s tracks are not aimed at the dancefloor. With a claim to universality and a broader frame of reference, 100records developed a more extensive understanding of sound that rests on three pillars: the understated analogue drums of the Roland TR-808, a blurred, dubby sound, and improvisation.

On first hearing, Exq I has little in common with the groovy, detailed, variation-rich sound usually associated with100records. Recorded at the end of a highly productive decade, it is an echo speaking of exhaustion in which dub, drone and collage converge to form something whose jazz sensibility makes it readily identifiable as the work of 100records.

100records was founded in 1994 by Muellie Messiah (Dirk Budde) and Ekki 808 (Ekkehard Rau), who were joined in 1999 by Punk not Punk (Martin Osti). Around 2002, Ekki departed, leaving Budde and Osti to continue as a duo. Since then, their relationship has shaped 100records: Budde is the driven lone genius doggedly pursuing sounds, Osti the pragmatist who turns ideas into music.

(...)

Atari Cubase sequencing became their speciality, with Budde and Osti sometimes working several days on a single sequence. The counterpart to these prepared sequences was live improvisation – on stage and in the studio. The recordings were edited by Budde, circulating as a weekly series of CD-Rs among friends and fellow musicians. In 2010 they stopped making music because, as Osti says, “we couldn’t do it any more”. From then on, the material was edited into final versions. In 2020, they completed their “legacy” in the form of 101 tracks. A number of these tracks have been released on SJ Tequilla’s Shot of T label, on Dynamo Dreesen’s Acido Records – and now on Jan Jelinek’s faitiche.

The faitiche release Exq I was made in the late period, in 2010, referred to by Osti as the New Music phase, when their productions became sparser and simpler. “This track is special for us. It made itself in the production process while we fought a weeks-long sound battle. The analogue equipment got warmed up over a few days, it wanted to keep going. We were like: Wow!”

In the decade-long process of editing the track, the focus was on reduction and deceleration: heavy dub. “Once we took some strong ecstasy. That heightened the effect, giving us a direct experience of the hallucinatory impact of the extended modulations.” Alexis Waltz, 2023

Muellie Messiah & Punk Not Punk: Exq I (excerpt)

Artist: Jan Jelinek
Title: SEASCAPE - polyptych (OST)
Cat#: faitiche 31
Release: April 28th 2023
Format: LP/DL

One of the most notorious hatemongers in movie history is Captain Ahab from John Huston’s 1956 classic Moby Dick. His manic monologues cast a spell on generations of viewers. Berlin based musician and sound artist Jan Jelinek has now turned the voice of Ahab into a musical instrument.

Faitiche presents Jan Jelinek's soundtrack for SEASCAPE – polyptych, an audio-visual software developed in collaboration with Canadian new media artist Clive Holden in 2022.
SEASCAPE – polyptych is based on image and acoustic source material from Moby Dick. While Holden works on manipulating film sequences, the voice of Ahab plays a central role in Jan Jelinek’s soundtrack. The dynamic volume and tone of the captain's speech control a synthesizer system that turns Ahabs voice into ten abstract soundscapes.

In this production the voice gives the impulse and controls things but is not the sound of spoken word itself that we hear. Only occasionally can snippets of speech be heard so that syllables or sounds are recognisable. Instead we hear compositions made of hissing, soundscapes and eruptive sounds. The atmosphere is dark and sinister. Still every piece has a clear sonic structure and follows an understandable dramatic composition. This music is abstract but not overwhelming. Quite the opposite, SEASCAPE – polyptych is an invitation to listeners to let themselves be carried by the stream of sonic events.
 
Although part of a media art work, the soundtrack can be enjoyed without any of this connecting superstructure. It works with no previous knowledge. But what happens when one does know that it’s the sonic waves of a human voice that is controlling a network of synthesizers?

If you want to hear Ahab, you will hear a choir of Ahabs in every piece of sound. The subliminal threatening as well as the conjuring Ahab. Finally the Ahab who whips up his crew and tears them with him into their downfall. The majestic „on the quay now, waiting and watching“, the oppressive “drawn towards the whirlpools center” - they are all music as well as sonic discourse.

Jan Jelinek: Drawn Toward The Whirlpool's Center

15 years of Faitiche.

Tracklisting and download: https://bit.ly/XLR8Rinfluences_JanJelinek

XLR8R Influences Podcast

Tracklist & Download

XLR8R Influences Podcast 24: Jan Jelinek

Artist: blackbody_radiation 
Title: Ultra-Materials
Cat#: faitiche 32
Release: September 8th 2023
Format: LP/DL

Faitiche welcomes Andrew Black aka blackbody_radiation. His debut album Ultra-Materials gathers six ghostly drones, created with the help of sound masking.

Andrew Black, who hails from one of the UK's post industrial North West Milltowns has a sensitive feeling for space and its acoustics. Having trained as a designer and operated within the realms of architecture and public space, it was only natural to extend his interest to manipulating field recordings.  The six pieces collected on Ultra-Materials provide an insight into Black's highly sensitive minimalism: they stand for a subtly meandering mediation on room acoustics and place, which are manipulated with the help of sound masking, among other things - that is, the addition and superimposition of artificially generated frequencies to mask unwanted sounds.   Sometimes the pieces are reminiscent of warm engine noise, sometimes one thinks of carefully captured natural phenomena. Their strength lies in their elusiveness: free of concrete attributions or musical location, they can unfold their hypnotic pull without revealing anything about their origins. Harmonics at times shimmer, at times warble and at times coexist. It is an attempt to get in touch with our listening abilities.

blackbody_radiation: Rhyolite

Artist: SG (Andrew Pekler) 
Title: For Lovers Only / Rain Suite  
Cat#: faitiche 33
Release: Oct 6th 2023
Format: LP/DL

SG is none other than Andrew Pekler returning to faitiche with an album of sentimental guitar escapism. For Lovers Only / Rain Suite features ten tracks made using only an electric guitar and a handful of effects pedals (plus some additional recordings of rain) and finds Pekler once again attempting to reconicile his tendencies towards kitsch, experimentation and minimalism.   What does Pekler's pseudonym SG stand for? Sentimental Guitar? Sound Gallery? Shy Guy? Sad Gnosis? Saudade Glamour? Soft Goth? We don't know, but we asked notorious Chicago romantic Sam Prekop for his take on the album – his reply:

It’s a wonder where the rivers go and far, how fast or slow. 

Just seconds to remember, who can forget,
when you are lost. 

I think to recount every step, in both hands, eyes open, the clouds unfold, one two three. 
Every other step, just as well.

Where the moss is soft, you know strong. How many hours, days?
I could have been careful, did I forget? 

Never mind. 
Waking up, in these arms, where the rivers go, slow. 
One two three, one two three.

SG (Andrew Pekler): Sentimental Guitar Dream

Artist: Roméo Poirier & The Exposures aka Jan Jelinek
Title: LOVE/HATE
Cat#: faitiche 34
Release: Dec 1st 2023
Format: 7" vinyl only

The vinyl single LOVE/HATE brings together two sample collages on the theme of good and evil. Often evoked and sung about, but rarely in such concentrated, systematic form, these collages present the words LOVE and HATE in a variegated catalogue of articulations. Poirier’s miniature radio play is anything but misanthropic: never before has the message of hate been conveyed in such a wonderfully warm-hearted manner. The LOVE side features a track originally released by Jan Jelinek in 2005 on the Eastern Developments label under the long-forgotten pseudonym The Exposures.

 From the original press release:

Originally intended as the intro to a special edition of the radio broadcast “Abenteuer Forschung” (Adventures in Research) on “sexuality and romance in digital postmodernism”, the composition collages countless “love” samples from the R&B genre. The “collage of digital passion” had a devastating effect, acting as an aphrodisiac that turned the recording session into an orgy. No further details were revealed by the broadcaster. Unfortunately, the programme wasn’t broadcast live so the secret is likely to remain locked away in the station’s archives forever. Nevertheless, Eastern Developments have managed to obtain authorisation for a “toned down” version of the original, providing the listener with a vague idea of the composition’s true impact.


A (HATE): Negative Feedback (Roméo Poirier), 3:37
B (LOVE): Collage Of Digital Passion (The Exposures aka Jan Jelinek), 3:02 

Negative Feeback (HATE), w & p by Roméo Poirier, 2023
Collage Of Digital Passion (LOVE), w & p by Jan Jelinek, 2002    
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi 
Design by Tim Tetzner

Roméo Poirier: Negative Feedback (HATE/A-side)

Artist: Giuseppe Ielasi
Title: Rhetorical Islands
Cat#: faitiche 35
Release: Mar 1st 2024
Format: LP/DL

First vinyl edition of the album Rhetorical Islands, originally released by Giuseppe Ielasi in 2012 as a limited-edition CD on his Senufo Editions label, with recordings made in 2011 as a commission for l’Audible Festival, Paris.

The album’s ten tracks have neither titles nor accompanying text, standing for themselves as what Ielasi himself has called “isolated sound worlds”. They are nonetheless unparalleled in their plasticity, acoustic events with a rare degree of tangibility. Ielasi evokes physical objects, some of which seem to have been constructed out of paper and cardboard, others based on a mechanics of elastic materials. Of course these objects are hallucinations, and precisely because Ielasi constructs them so masterfully there’s no need for any further information. Here’s to everyone creating their very own sculptures while listening to Rhetorical Islands!

The front and back cover features 0.058, a work on paper by the artists Thomas & Renée Rapedius. They make sculptures whose form and artistic inspiration are defined by their materials. Like Ielasi’s acoustic islands, their impact derives from self-referentiality, resulting in paradoxical objects that embody both a detailed material study and a potential for free association.

Giuseppe Ielasi: 06

Artist: Jan Jelinek
Title: Social Engineering
Cat#: faitiche 36
Release: May 3rd 2024
Format: LP/DL

In my mailbox: "Good day info, the conquer solidity static status gigolo. 2 caves dungeons song. pitch fungus vim, 14 triplets listlessness. celluloid advisor applying. season globe Italy, switch-off amphitheatre 42 updraught. The popularity buddha languish fifth mockery. holder condensate minima. the tutorial verifized (and rinse). 14 appetence concept’s. dullness captived cockerel. With good wishes, Dr. Fatimaiy Oakley"

Social Engineering brings together thirteen text fragments from so-called phishing emails. Using speech synthesis, they are spoken, sung, and/or transformed into abstract textures. The result is a 36-minute language and sound collage devoted to the dark forces of phishing.

Jan Jelinek: Social Engineering 1 (The Narrative Of The Heritage)

Artist: Jonathan Scherk & Daniel Majer
Album: It's Counterpart
Label#: Faitiche19
Format: LP/DL

Faitiche is delighted to welcome two young artists from Canada: Jonathan Scherk and Daniel Majer hail from the post-rock and experimental scene in Vancouver, where they shared a studio for several years. In artistic terms, too, there is a surprising coherence: on It’s Counterpart, their solo work naturally blends to create a joint album, making it hard to distinguish between their contributions. Majer describes his part as a shadow-like reflection to Scherk’s brightly meandering collages. The album’s title refers to this: It's Counterpart presents two solo artists who have met their match in one another.

Scherk and Majer produce contemporary sound collages on samplers, laptops etc. using raw material drawn from YouTube videos, field recordings, cassettes, and LPs from the dollar bin – the kind of rightly forgotten obscurities that have long since lost their audience, if they ever had one. In the hands of Scherk and Majer, they become abstract sound objects. The two artists don't concern themselves with the material's original context – the sound's character is most important. This sets them apart from other collage artists. Their work might be called a contemporary upgrade of the classic tape collage: here, channelling a wealth of information is the main focus. So are these collages that trigger neither associations nor contexts? Au contraire! It’s Counterpart is like an overheated centrifuge whose spinning extracts and joins together all of the harmonies ever pressed on vinyl. Melodies run amok.

Jonathan Scherk: Get a Little s / Daniel Majer:  She Barely Spoke (excerpt)

Factish (french / german faitiche) "(...) is a combination of facts and fetishes, and makes it obvious that the two have a common element of fabrication." Bruno Latour, 1999.

Faitiche is a label by Jan Jelinek.

Jonathan Scherk: Get a Little s / Daniel Majer: She Barely Spoke (excerpt)

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