The history of language knows many special relationships – among these special relationships, one of the most remarkable is that between music journalism and metaphors from the world of cooking. Everywhere it is bubbling and simmering, artists as well as female artists marinate, garnish or serve their sound accordingly. The whole world of pleasure is one big feast! Jan Jelinek’s new album »The Raw and The Cooked« is correspondingly seductive. The title alone is a free pass for a melange of metaphors with a chef’s hat and sound description, rounded off with the one or other stylistic flourish on the side of the plate. But in the end, the German artist’s five collages come across as so fleeting, so intangible, that this album has to do with quite a few senses – just not quite as much with tasting. Originally composed as a piece for German radio station SWR, »The Raw and The Cooked« deals with the different aggregate states of things. So to speak. For the record first deals with the two artists Thomas and Renée Rapedius, who ritually prepared Japanese tea together. So far, so relaxed. However, nothing more can be heard of this. For Jan Jelinek has dissolved all form. Sounds shift, disappear, exchange under the surface. His version of ambient and field recordings is correspondingly imprecise and time-consuming. There are no melodies, only a sphere in various designs and states. Sometimes solid, sometimes flowing. With no obvious loops or anything else for the mind or ear to latch onto. But for this reason, a lot happens inside while listening to »The Raw and The Cooked«, forms and feelings open up. And no metaphor, no matter how extraordinary, can capture that. You simply have to experience it yourself.
The Fun Years
Baby, It’s Cold Inside
Keplar