Selected Press Quotes janek schaefer

"Janek Schaefer has a unique gift for seeing process in spatial terms."
[Migration] The Wire Magazine

"Janek Schaefer's ability to process source material is second to none."
[Above Buildings] Friend of the Devil, UK

"Janek’s first sound-work, 'Recorded Delivery', remains one of the wittiest and most interesting in the field of Sound Art. It is elegant, economical and clever, and makes me wish I'd thought of it first."
Brian Eno [2005]

"Then it ended. The lights came softly on and Janek stood up and thanked everybody. People sat up blinking and bewildered and gave a huge applause. Slowly, the crowd gathered around Janek ... We really were all left quite speechless!"
[In the last hour] Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival , UK

"Where you'd thought that Fluxus and everything that came after it had turned almost every stone, this man keeps coming up with concepts that are so simple they excite you."
[Weather Report] Uzine, Belgium

"A piece to return to again and again... haunting and lulling" [The Wire]
"So inspirational, and in many ways very spiritual" [Gerry Turvey]
"I was so deeply touched by your piece" [Mandeep Kaur Samra]
[Extended Play installation]

"Observing and hearing these spaces without their usual hustle and bustle is as
psychologically liberating as running through the aisles of a supermarket after closing time"
[Vacant Space] The Wire

"In the Last Hour confirms Janek's position as a leading contemporary sound artist"
"Sounds like what a cathedral made out of glass would look like... Completely essential"
"A superb overview of one of the UK’s most compelling sound artists and composers"
"This is indeed his best work"
[In the last hour]

"This is a major tour de force of eleven beauties. Great stuff from great minds"
"An invitation to perfection, so powerful is the magic of Stephan & Janek"
"An absolute masterpiece...that also touched me very deeply"
"..quietly magnificent"
[Hidden Name]

"Ambitious, revealing, and terribly, abstractly impressive."
Other Music shop, NYC, [Above Buildings]

"Cold Storage is an impressive resumé not only of Schaefer's own career as a sound artist, but of half a century of theory and practice of electronic music in all its diverse forms".
[Cold Storage] Dan Warburton, The Wire, UK

"Schaefer's own practice seems wonderfully reductive at the moment he keeps aside the toys, fireworks and glitch software, that can curdle so much electronic music well away from his work, and sticks to volume, spatialisation and a complex investigation of the human voice, where the inconsistencies of the Schaefer family choir create eerie microtones similar to Ligeti's late 60's work for voices."
[Love Song] Sonic Arts Network

"Janek Schaefer has developed a system which has the feedback potential of Tudor's network of electronic devices coupled with a turntable and records as sound source a la Cage...When I heard him performing from a 'score', the sonic and compositional clarity was astonishing and in a way seemed to make the distinction between acousmatic composition and live performance almost redundant..."
[OUT] Andrew Deakin, Sonic Arts Network Magazine, UK

"Soundscape of the year - keep track of this chap."
[Pulled Under] Radio Katanga, Belgium

"The Tri-Phonic even earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for The World's Most Versatile Record Player - though, if you ask me, the title should have been 'Best Experimental Music Invention' since Harry Partch's 31-Tone Zoomoozophone.
Nick Phillips, City Pages, Minneapolis

"The tip of the iceberg of an up and coming career halfway between sound art, concrete music and the most imaginative turntablism."
Sonar festival programme 2002

"Avant-turntable heaven, London's coolest audio architect."
Sonic Arts Network, London [Cut and Splice at the ICA]

"The sheer dangerous joy of our losing complete control. Even after multiple listens, it doesn’t even come close to revealing all of the intricacies contained within."
[Pulled Under] Dusted Magazine, US

"No doubt that Janek Schaefer is one of those notorious composers who contributes to musical history. The manipulations that he causes, create a spectacular result, sound-spheres at the razor's edge."
[OUT] Johan Loones, K-raa-K3

"Like Lewis Carroll's character Alice falling into the rabbit hole. Buried with in the artist's resounding rooms we can wander about, completely lost in this world where no reference point is solid enough to hold on to. Highly recommended."
[Pulled Under] All Music Guide.

".....the week long Festival's highlight was made using a record player. Janek Schaefer played records, many of them custom made, on a reversible turntable with two tone arms......."
Bill Meyer, Chicago Tribune review of Transmissions 04

Janek Schaefer is a rising star of the new European electronic music circuit, to the level of Marcus Popp, Fennesz and Pita."
[Above Buildings] Scaruffi web site 2000, Italy

"I've been listening to this "style" of music for many years and your music is like a breath of fresh air, BRILLIANT. I am now a big fan and look forward to hearing more."
[Pulled Under] Mark Farmer, Kiosk Customer

"In turns expanding on the familiarity of everyday life and bringing the enormous, infinite universe down to whisper a secret in your ear. A cinematic-like venture that evolves and climaxes, then concludes with a moment of silence, Above Buildings is a remarkable experience for the adventurous listener’.
[Above Buildings] Forced Exposure USA

" 'Wow' is a wry reminder that music, for all its ineffability, is at base just a specialised branch of physics."
[Wow 7"] The Wire

"Schaefer shows again how truly moving and satisfying honest experimental music can be when it is the expressed statement of a sincere artistic movement."
[Above Buildings] Olivier Lamm, France

"Schaefer creates compositions that are open and warm and full of shifting swathes of static and hum. His music is lush and gorgeous, and sounds equally interesting at high or low volumes. While there are eight tracks on "Above Buildings", I find myself not realising when or where one begins and another ends. It doesn’t really matter though, the CD player's on repeat."
[Above Buildings] Stylus, Canada

"With music that really articulates a sense of environmental space, its no surprise too learn that Janek Schaefer is an architect. He's one of a number of turntablists to reconnect to an earlier musique concrete tradition. Schaefer generally deserves congratulation for his admirable sense of sonic architecture."
[OUT] Brian Duguid, The Wire

The Guardian, ‘On the edge’ CD of the week 22nd December 2000.
[Above Buildings]

"You cannot listen to this music and do something that requires concentration."
[Above Buildings] Pitchfork Media, USA,