The term “Faitiche” (French/German for “factish”), was coined by French social theorist Bruno Latour, referring to “… a combination of facts and fetishes… [making] it obvious that the two have a common element of fabrication.” Since making a splash in 2008 with the debut release Recordings 1969–1988, a faux-historical archive from then-unknown experimental electronic producer Ursula Bogner, Jan Jelinek’s boutique Berlin-based imprint Faitiche has established a curious niche for itself in the electronic music scene.

According to Jelinek, the qualities that distinguish his label are themes of “fictional and multiple identities” with a strong focus on “manipulated field recordings and sampling, or sound collage in all its forms”. Ideas and limitations are explored, at times with what feels like obsessive detail, and yet the results are hardly ever clinical or antiseptic. Instead, much of the catalogue is compellingly louche and elegantly minimal; there’s humour, nostalgia, jest. Introvert microbeats, retrofuturistic electronica, spaced-out synthetic exotica. Here’s a selection of 7 tracks that demonstrate Faitiche’s diversity and playful uniqueness.

Roméo Poirier
“Muscle De Sable”
From Living Room

With his debut release for Faitiche (his third solo LP), Roméo Poirier has drawn from an audio archive kept by his father, using those sounds to make music exploring entanglements of time – history, autobiography, memory. Living Room also continues with the aquatic themes that have been present in his past work (for instance 2020’s Hotel Nota), with the producer re-amping and recording submerged sound with waterproof equipment in a bathtub. "Muscle De Sable" is a slinky groove draped in a tape-chewed, jazzy haze and gently shuffling noise. The vague outlines of a beat emerge between distant metallic clangs and intimate knocks, drips, and pops. Mysterious jittering samples surface briefly, the odd guitar figure, maybe a human voice, semi-obscured under a thick patina of surface noise.

Jan Jelinek
“Do Dekor”
From Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records (2001)

The atomised chill of Jelinek’s Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records (a cult hit from 2001 originally released on ~scape, reissued by Faitiche in 2017), exemplifies the playful/playfully restrained Faitiche aesthetic. Economical ideas are explored forensically and rendered in generous detail. Abundant minimalism. As the title suggests, every sound on the album has been sourced from jazz records – harvested microsamples of varying texture, shaped, squeezed and sequenced into something new. Jelinek, being more interested in the distinct sonic quality of jazz than the actual musical style of it, also seems to be influenced by the virtuosic nature of jazz performance, which he demonstrates here via deft, confident, and creative use of technology. Propulsive, minuscule. Moreish.

Andrew Pekler
“Approximate Bermeja”
From Sounds From Phantom Islands (2019)

Andrew Pekler’s Sounds From Phantom Islands project is linked to an interactive online map that he created which plots the locations of nonexistent islands on a global map, allowing site visitors to hear fictional field recordings from those places. On the album, Pekler fashions these sounds into elliptical slices of fantasy exotica, synthetically surreal. “Approximate Bermeja” is a good example with its chirping insects and frogs, distant bird calls, gooey synths, circular mallets.

Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek
“Waltz (Alonely Crowd)”
From Bird, Lake, Objects (2010)

Bird, Lake, Objects is a creative dialogue between Jelinek (performing here on electronics) and vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita. Jelinek and Fujita play off each other well, leaving plenty of space for the music to breathe. Location recordings taken from the vicinity of the actual performances bring texture and depth to the procedings, and Fujita’s tentative, shimmering figures are an excellent match to to Jelinek’s treatments. The results are intimate, dreamy and beautifully understated. “Waltz (A Lonely Crowd)” captures this essence; a glistening cluster of harmonic overtones spins almost in time with the rhythms of distant shakers and bells, creating an entrancing polymetric groove.

Jan Jelinek
“Marcel Duchamp, Would You Like Or Expect People To Spin The Wheel On Your Kinetic Object Roue De Bicyclette?”
From Zwischen (2018)

A good example of how Faitiche releases can balance conceptual seriousness with a sense of mischief, Zwischen (Between), is a collection of celebrity radio interviews, reconstructed without any words. Instead, Jelinek has stitched together the silences, hesitations, and ineloquent moments into a sort of textural poetry. On this track, a wordless response from Marcel Duchamp to the question “would you like or expect people to spin the wheel on your kinetic object Roue de Bicyclette?”, is a stuttering fizz of non-verbal body noises. It’s fun to listen to, and it brings some interesting ideas to the surface concerning language, the nature of communication and the meanings of silence.

Jonathan Scherk & Daniel Majer
“Piaget”
From It’s Counterpart

A pair of solo artists hailing from Vancouver’s post-rock and experimental scene come together in this joint project, each contributing sound collages in response to the other, using sources from YouTube, charity bin LPs, cassettes and field recordings. Scherk’s pieces are brighter, while Majer’s collages exist in a more shadowy place, however the line separating the two is not always easily distinguished. The results are texturally abundant, blurring and blending multiple almost-familiar sources into a dreamlike swirl. A good example of this is Majer’s “Piaget”, with it’s rustling guitars, lapping waves, dense new-age pads and jittering vocal samples.

Ursula Bogner
“Modes”
From Recordings 1968–1988 (2008)

The delicious ambiguity of Faitiche, specifically the way that Jelinek is often happy to blur the line between truth and fiction, is probably best exemplified in the archival release of Ursula Bogner’s collected Recordings 1968–1988, the debut project put out by the label in 2008. Originally promoted as a bonafide music-historical discovery, and reported as such by many outlets, the project comes complete with a plausible backstory and associated historical artefacts (images, graphic artworks, writings). These days Jelinek is open about the fiction, with recent online bios claiming the Bogner project as his own. The music itself is extremely charming and listenable, nailing the pseudo-scientific analogue naiveté of early electronic experiments by the likes of Raymond Scott, Tom Dissevelt or Daphne Oram.

Read more about Faitiche inside our latest issue The Wire 464. Wire subscribers can also read the magazine via our online library.