It all started with a Secret Thirteen mix in 2014. Before this I’d never heard of Jan Jelinek, and truthfully, the only reason I even gave it a chance was superficial – the disparate track list, and that I recognized some of the names on it. Incorporating Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Dean Blunt and Bernard Parmegiani, amongst others, into a coherent set, that covers a sixty-year time span in music, was some undertaking.

That Jelinek managed it with some aplomb led to me to giving his own material a look.

Fortunately, going through his catalogue didn’t seem as daunting as first dipping your toe into Bob Dylan, which is a rite of passage for everyone, contending with Richard D. James’ various Pseudonyms and SoundCloud dumps, or the labyrinth discographies of Coil or Muslimgauze. On the latter, Bryn Jones may have died in 1999, but he still remains prolific. However, Jelinek has multiple other aliases, so there was still a fair amount of ground to be covered.

After chipping away at it for ten years, in a process as satisfying as collecting Subbuteo teams back in the day, I reckon I’ve narrowed it down to a few essential releases in Jelinek’s catalogue that are musts and good entry points for the uninitiated.

The theme with all of Jelinek’s works is repurposing, first deconstruction of jazz instrumentals into fragments and then reconstructing them into a new perspective, fused with abrupt glitching and other electronic effects and fluctuations from a programmable drum machine. To simplify, quoting that narrated sample used by The Orb in Little Fluffy Clouds “layering different sounds on top of each other” or, to use my old man’s hyper-specific interpretation of the genre; “that’s LSD music”. What I won’t do is refer to it as microhouse, a hideously twee, lazy journalese term favoured by pretentious wankers at Pitchfork or the Guardian music review pages.

The onus on Improvisation and Edits Tokyo is soothing ambiances contorted by static-glitch, think Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series and Brian Eno’s Music For Airports meeting the piercing fragmentation of Muslimgauze’s Iranair Inflight Magazine. There’s maximum fruit machine freneticism on the chaotic “Hot Barbeque” and “Barbeque Version”. Those two outliers aside the looping samples are predominantly brass rather than base, creating salubriously sombre melodies on “The New Anthem” “Watch What Happens” and “Straight Life”, while the density of layering on “The Post-Anthem” fosters a persistent drone that reminded me of Do While by Oval.

The Textstar+ remaster from 2022 is peak Jelinek. Some offerings have a kindship with DJ Sprinkles’ penchant for muffled baselines, see “T.Microsystems” and “Silikon”. “FF” is a seat groover and toe tapper with a delightful twang and on “Farben Says So Much Love” the tempo is jacked up to tits with a wicked repeating baseline while the groove is imbued by another layer of base. “farben Says Love To Love You Baby” follows a similar pattern but with strings being punctured by a truncated sax sample. The prominence and the abruptness of the glitch used on “Suntouch Edit” wouldn’t feel out of place on Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records.

Side note – Soulseeking this one to ensure you get tracks that were on the original Starbox release but that are omitted on the reissue is a good idea. There’s five of them missing (likely due to copywrite); “At The Golden Circle Stockholm Vol. 1, 1965”, “Live At The Roxy, 1984”, “Raw Macro”, “Loop Exposure” and “Bayreuth”.

Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records delivers on the title’s promise, melodies are created by abbreviated repeating samples, and are mostly piano based, except where specified on “Moire (strings)”. “They Them” has deep baselines punctuated by static before it’s embellished by a piano loop, “Them Their” uses a similar structure to create a softer tone. This record proves how versatile sampling one instrument can be, when the surrounding embellishments and pacing are altered. “Rock In The Video Age” borrows from the austere industrialist aesthetic on Basic Channel’s Radiance EP. “Do Dekor” has the lot, rhythm set by static, simple organ chords and fragments of a warm baseline just begging to be brought into ascendency throughout.

Bandcamp release blurbs are often drably po-faced, the one for Do you know Otahiti, however, was at least concise:

“Do you know Otahiti? is a twofold collage; it combines unreleased material with fragments taken from Kennen Sie Otahiti?, a radio collage produced for SWR Radio in 2012 on the theme of fictional and real travelogues”

Not a great sell, is it? But don’t be put off by how naff that sounds. Conceptually “Do you know Otahiti” comes dangerously close to a wankery art installation, but escapes this burning cross as the splices of German narration are married to an ominous echo vocal effect, which belies the (likely?) banality. A dramatic shift to a looped vocal creates an atmospheric unease, before the track tapers off. This would not work in English, I guarantee it, some Cockney geezer saying “I went to Butlins with the kids and got shat on by a seagull” over such an interesting score would be Damien Hirst try-hard cringe. Comparatively the rest of EP feels less experimental but regal. “Live at Frameworks Munich 2012” utilises a dainty mellow percussion contradicted by creepy buglike tapping sounds. “Live at Avantjazz” sees the vibraphone of collaborator Masayoshi Fujita take centre stage to create a zen Japanese garden ambiance. Japan meets Germany may have not been a hit eighty years ago, but it is here.

The best thing I can say about Jelinek’s material is how moreish it is. Traversing from one Jelinek release to another over the past decade has been akin to cleaning down the back of the sofa and finding a two-pound coin, repeatedly. It’s a process that’s made me richer in the way that matters.