A collection of tracks created out of longer radio broadcasts of interviews with famous individuals, each song title on the comical and poignant Zwischen from German electronic musician Jan Jelinek poses a question, such as “John Cage, I’ve been told to ask you the following question: Where are you going?” and “Yoko Ono, you were born into a rich, aristocratic family in Tokyo. Do you see that in yourself?” Zwischen’s electronics sound like buzzing, whining Kraftwerk-ian tinker toys and phone dials struggling to uplift the main melody lines, which are composed out of the pauses, “um’s,” and lapses in sound as interviewees search for answers.
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Like Jelinek’s other work, these pieces are experimental, and while they may be classifiable as musique concrète, the interviewee’s voice as the only recorded sound creates a sense of direction, especially considering the synthesizer sounds are tied directly to the recorded “answer.” Contrasting sounds often follow each other rather than overlap, creating a listening experience that can be as disorienting as a particularly pointed question.
Six years after its release, Zwischen provides insight into the lengths to which electronic music has since further ventured into odd and explorative sampling and abstract electronic techniques. The sampled glacial ice melting on Welsh disc jockey Kelly Lee Owens’s “MELT!” shares a black sense of humor with the sound of Ono’s gulps when asked about her affluent background. Pushing the boundaries even further, on “HAHA,” innovative oddballs and Owens collaborators Bolis Pupul and Charlotte Adigéry use sampled giggles and laughter over an increasingly elaborate dance track, which can be either comical and disconcerting depending on the listener in the same way John Cage’s laughter can be both a blast of comedy or an ominous cackle arising from the static sea.
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Though there has to be some levity involved when asking Marcel Duchamp about whether he expects people to spin his latest art piece’s mounted bicycle wheel, not all of Zwischen pokes fun at the interviewees. Karlheinz Stockhausen, the most esoteric subject and likely the most influential on Jelinek, is posed a serious technical question about the recording process, a much more surface-level question than than the pointed inquiry received by Ono; it makes one wonder how Jelinek’s perceptions of the interviewees and their answers affected the choice of synths and other instrumentation during production. Stockhausen murmurs over glass and skittering little chimes until disappearing with a peaceful plink, while Ono’s response is filtered through a specific time period, the sounds of the bustling capital of her childhood, cars rushing by before every thought. How frightening and beautiful the past can be, when you are asked to evaluate your own universe.
