Janek Schaefer reveals the sublime and documentary nature of his sound in this “double decade dubplate” of music from 33 of his releases spanning 22 years.

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[social_warfare]

Janek Schaefer is a sound artist and professor from London, whose works sit between the boundaries of ambient, field recordings, electro-acoustic experimentation and social commentary. He released his albums on such labels as Lawrence English’s Room40 (which also released his most recent record Glitter In My Tears), his own audiOH! Recordings, Line, Dekorder and others. Over his career, he has also collaborated with Charlemagne Palestine, Philip Jeck, Robert Hampson and Stephan Mathieu. One of the distinct features of Janek’s sublime, floating soundscapes is their occasional focus on locale and the method of composition behind them. Janek uses custom made turntables so as to forefront the surface noise of the record, thus adding an additional layer of warmth to his either nocturnal or luminous soundscapes. During live performances he builds his narratives using a triphonic turntable and vinyl records. In his interview for the Ear Room, Janek points out that his work is “about space and place and finding sound around him”. This resonates with his background in architecture, which he studied at the Royal College of Art. Janek is a resident of Walton-on-Thames, but his preoccupation with London haunts his records in a variety of forms. One of the examples of this might be the album Lay-By Lullaby released on 12k label, where Janek incorporated location recordings made at midnight above the M3 motorway, not far from the place where J.G. Ballard lived. The record might be interpreted as an exploration of hypnotic nature, of driving along the motorway with London’s cold lights looming in the background, the radio murmuring sounds to keep you awake. There might even be some indirect parallels to Iain Sinclair’s circular wanderings around the M25, so vividly described in his book “London Orbital”. J.G. Ballard frequently resurfaces in Janek’s work as we can obviously see from the track “Inner Space Memorial (For J.G. Ballard)”. There are also quite a few spoken word elements infused in Janek’s music. Despite its sometimes soothing quality, some of tracks can be treated as a representation of the zeitgeist and the destructive tendencies within humanity. This makes Janek’s music sound as an audio equivalent to Patrick Keiller’s Robinson film series where the ambience of the environment and industrial landscapes are employed to depict the inner problems of London and other parts of the UK. Despite that, there is also a deeply touching and overwhelming sense of light in Schaefer’s music, which makes it comparable in some ways to Harold Budd’s or John Foxx’s ambient output. The sense is usually impersonal and has an element of grandeur about it.

Secret Thirteen Mix 225 is composed from the tracks of 33 releases of Janek’s 22-year recording career. It lets us trace the evolution of his sound and serves as a guide through its marvellous terrains of nightly cityscapes, headlit highways, lush, bright and melancholic harmonies. The mix starts with a 1995 BBC Radio interview, where Janek explains the idea behind the Recorded Delivery record, one of his early pieces delivered by post to the Self Storage Center in London. The piece is basically a recorded journey of a package being delivered to the center. No wonder the extract of it inaugurates the record as it symbolises the relation between Schaefer’s music and environmental perceptions and issues. A big part of the mix encompasses the feature of his sound mentioned in the above paragraph. By floating together with the pieces in this continuous “double decade dubplate” (as Janek himself calls it), we might encounter the our own surroundings in different tones and shades. Moreover, the mix also illustrates the versatility and consistency of Janek’s discography and the way it uses different elements to immerse into the world of beauty and caution. This is the third time that we are using Jock McFadyen’s artwork to illustrate our mixes, but his London-centric, sparse, vast textures, vivid cityscapes and subtle light undertones have a similar effect as that of Schaefer’s music. “From Dracula’s Garden” depicts the view across the river Thames from Purfleet and acts as a solemn and tranquil landscape as well as as a visual commentary on industrialisation.

A special thanks to Lawrence English, the head of Room40, for acting as a medium between the journal and Janek to make this mix happen.

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Tracklisting

00 / [00:00] / From the beginning an interview on BBC Radio 4 in 1995
01 / [02:30] / ‘Recorded Delivery’ / Recorded Delivery CD / audiOh! - UK / 1995
02 / [04:30] / ‘Dierotic’ / Disturbed in Disguise Cassette / audiOh! - UK / 1996
03 / [05:25] / ‘His Master’s Voices’ / His Master’s Voices LP / audiOh! - UK / 1997
04 / [06:56] / ‘Sablon Inferno’ / H.I.T.S Cassette / audiOh! - UK /1998
05 / [09:00] / ‘Construction Five’ / Rotation & Oscillation Cassette / audiOh! - UK /1998
06 / [12:10] / ‘Construction Eight’ / OUT CD / Kraak3 – Belgium / 1999
07 / [16:00] / ‘Albarad’ / Above Buildings CD / Fat Cat – UK / 2000
08 / [19:00] / ‘Wow’ / On/Off LP / audiOh! - UK / 2001
09 / [20:00] / ‘Verglas’ / Comae CD / with Robert Hampson / Rhiz – Austria / 2001
10 / [22:45] / ‘Superchannel’ / Pulled Under CD / audiOh! - UK / 2002
11 / [24:40] / ‘Le Petit Theatre De Mercelis’ / Audiosphere CD / Sub Rosa – Belgium / 2002
12 / [27:15] / ‘Phase 7’ / Black Immure CD / Sirr – Portugal / 2003
13 / [29:00] / ‘Fourth Floor’ / Quality Hotel CD / with Stephan Mathieu, Radboud Mens, Timeblind / Mutek – Canada / 2003
14 / [30:00] / ‘Rink’ / Skate LP / Staalplaat – Holland / 2003
15 / [31:40] / ‘Istanbul Drift’ / Songs for Europe CD / with Philip Jeck / Asphodel – USA / 2004
16 / [36:30] / ‘Room 1’ / Cold Storage CD / DSP – Italy / 2004
17 / [39:35] / ‘To Oval to Cologne’ / Migration CD / BiP_HOp – France / 2005
18 / [42:15] / ‘Fugue’ / Hidden Name CD / with Stephan Mathieu / Cronica – Portugal / 2006
19 / [46:35] / ‘Half submerged by each’ / In the last hour / Room40 – Australia / 2006
20 / [52:00] / ‘Acoustic Ensemble’ / Extended Play CD / Line – USA / 2008
21 / [57:00] / ‘End of Hope and Glory’ / Alone at last CD / Sirr – Portugal / 2008
22 / [57:55] / ‘Eyes close in Heaven’ / Phoenix and Phaedra holding patterns CD / Spekk – Japan / 2011
23 / [60:10] / ‘Spark rising over the lights of Scarlett Heights’ / Double Exposure CD / Cronica - Portugal / 2011
24 / [62:00] / ‘National Portrait 192’ / National Portrait 24hr USB / Room40 – Australia / 2011
25 / [63:10] / ‘In-car Radio 1’ / Asleep at the Wheel Cassette / My Dance the Skull – UK / 2011
26 / [66:00] / ‘Raga de l'aprés midi pour Aude’ / Day of the Demons LP / with Charlemagne Palestine / Desire Path – USA / 2012
27 / [68:10] / ‘Radio 111FM’ / Lay-by Lullaby CD / 12k – USA / 2014
28 / [70:20] / ‘Wonderland’ / Inner Space Memorial in Wonderland LP / Dekorder – Germany / 2014
29 / [73:00] / ‘White lights of divine darkness’ / Unfolding Luxury beyond the City of Dreams LP / Dekorder – Germany / 2014
30 / [79:30] / ‘Imagine a World’ / World News CD / Rev:Lab – Holland / 2015
31 / [82:20] / ‘Glitter in my tears’ / Glitter in my tears CD / Room40 – Australia / 2017
32 / [82:50] / ‘https://www.foundsoundscape.com’ / calm radio station, live online 24hrs a day / audiOh! - UK /
33 / [85:10] / ‘Tree at the end of the world’ / Round in Circles LP / 2017
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