About

Twenty years ago, Jan Jelinek’s debut album Personal Rock was released by Source Records. Under the pseudonym Gramm, it brings together eight tracks that have not been available on vinyl since their original release. Faitiche is very glad to announce the re-release of the album: Personal Rock will appear as a double LP featuring the original cover artwork. — (via Label)

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Jelinek has been preoccupied with sampling throughout his career. It seems like jazz source material was as integral to (Personal Rock) as it was on Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records. If Jelinek had a trademark style from this angle, it would be the gauzy chords processed beyond recognition. As on Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, these chords set a cosy, delicate tone. At times the samples are more explicit. A double bass phrase comes through clearly towards the end of "Type Eins," sounding oddly conspicuous in the wider context of Jelinek's work (but certainly not unwelcome). These ingredients lend the record a human touch, one of the key factors in what makes the music so compelling.

Like many of Jelinek's releases, (Personal Rock) drifts by with a processionary calm, but on some tracks some purposeful switch-ups arise late on. On a system with enough bass presence, the sustained low-end drone at the end of "Non-Relations" has a powerful, ominous effect. The string-laced final passage of "Type Zwei" has an elegant, haunting quality, the expressive potential of his spartan musical components let loose. — (via Resident Advisor)

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Perhaps most striking about Personal Rock, listening back after 20 years, is how lo-fi it sounds today. There’s a reason for that: The rudimentary gear Jelinek used didn’t allow for much in the way of fidelity. But that muddy quality is a far cry from the way this stuff was presented at the time, when glitch techno tended to be hailed as a harbinger of a brave new future. In retrospect, Jelinek’s debut album has almost as much in common with the burned-out shoegaze of a band like Flying Saucer Attack as it does the lab-coated discipline of Berlin’s Raster-Noton or the laser-like repetitions of Oval. Jelinek’s work on Personal Rock is murky, moody, and, above all, expressive in a way we don’t often expect of this era of electronic music. Where minimal techno was often noted for its rigidity, the rhythms on “Type Zwei,” the album’s standout track, recall Can’s Jaki Liebezeit in their liquid grace. Zero in on the movements of Jelinek’s shape-shifting glitches, and the drab specter of silicon falls by the wayside; instead, you might hear crickets, windshield wipers, lawn sprinklers. Like a lot of art lurking in the shadow of Y2K, glitch techno was often assumed to be cold and overly intellectualized—all head, no hips—but Personal Rock is a reminder of how soulful the era’s digital music could be. — (via Pitchfork)

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Label: Faitiche
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue
Reissued: 2019 / Originally Released: 1999
Genre: Electronic
Style: Abstract, Minimal, Ambient, Glitch

File under: Ambient / Experimental / IDM
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