Jan Jelinek, Arthur Clees - Live in Luxembourg, December 3rd 2021 (2024) [Hi-Res]

The great Jan Jelinek bashes heads with young Luxembourg-based percussionist Arthur Clees on this manicured set of live recordings, juxtaposing Clees' adept, freeform rolls with vintage electronic blips and whooshes, and glacial, dubbed-out FX. Jelinek and Clees had never met each other before they played together at the vinyl harvest, a small record store in Esch-sur-Alzette. 'Live in Luxembourg...' is a sequence of four excerpts from that risky performance, and from the sounds of it the two managed to find their groove quickly. An experienced improviser who's studied classical music and jazz, Clees is also a passionate producer who's developing his voice as a beatmaker. And it sounds as if he's able to lock into Jelinek's palette effortlessly here: on 'excerpt 1', Clees plays light, loose patters that offer direction to Jelinek's alien belches and burbles, and when Jelinek switches to cloudy pads, Clees enhances the texture with drawn out cymbal whooshes and brushed whispers. Clees' approach is more rugged on 'excerpt 2', where his pacy polyrhythms form into a kind of cybernetic structure against Jelinek's xenharmonic waves. The percussion takes the lead here, and Clees shows off his versatility without grandstanding, while Jelinek listens and responds with a veteran's restraint. It's Clees' turn to take a back seat on the moody 'excerpt 3', a lengthy minimal, drone-based jam that sounds closer to Jelinek's recent material, and on the fourth, closing excerpt, Jelinek provides reverberating, Raymond Scott-like synth bursts while Clees lays down a Milford Graves-like machine-gun rattle.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Jan Jelinek, Arthur Clees - excerpt 1 (6:40)
1.02 - Jan Jelinek, Arthur Clees - excerpt 2 (6:54)
1.03 - Jan Jelinek, Arthur Clees - excerpt 3 (9:24)
1.04 - Jan Jelinek, Arthur Clees - excerpt 4 (4:26)