Czech Republic expat Tomas Jirku ranks among Canada's elite cadre of minimalist musicians. His luminous melodies whirl amid dubby techno and IDMbience, making for a stimulating tactile headphone experience or, when pitched up by a resourceful DJ, enticing warm-up ammo for a deep tech-house club set.
Most dance music aspires to arouse euphoria, to make the crowd feel like one throbbing organism ever on the brink of orgasm; Jirku's productions inspire a restrained, fizzy sense of well-being that's just as therapeutic as the effects induced by his more outlandish peers. His records trigger a party in your head more than in your hips. Many producers are flashier and more demonstrative, but Jirku's oracular introversion possesses a sly charm, too. His contribution to the epochal Clicks & Cuts 2 comp, "Pohdka," sounds like a celebratory tech-house fist-pumper crafted by a cautious optimist. It's indicative of Jirku's lean, incisive style. There's a sober propriety about Jirku's cheese-free music, even on a cut titled "Booty" (off the Met@music compilation), which bustles and fizzes with a joy tempered with the knowledge that the higher you get, the harder you fall, so let's not get carried away, eh?
But don't think Jirku can't get down and flirty. Sequins (Force Inc., 2000) is his most DJ-friendly work, affectionately retrofitting disco and house for a more streamlined, less coked-up decade. Ravers and club queens won't thrill to its subtle manipulations of familiar dance-floor tropes, but the album stands as a vibrant subversion of and homage to much-maligned genres.
Never content to stay in one place for long, Jirku deviates into aquatic dub with Entropy (intr_version, 2002). Here, his laptop seems to be immersed in Pacific depths, emitting beatific waves that stir you at a molecular level. This one's strictly for the head(phone)s. Jirku's 2003 collaboration with Robin Judge, Plusism, fuses Basic Channel's dubwise sonic fragmentation and illusion-mongering to an array of glitchy tonal holographs, then nudges them on their way with supple, gliding 4/4 beats. It's uncertain what style(s) Jirku will unleash at his Seattle gig, but wherever he goes, you should attentively follow.
Jirku told Discorder's tobias c. van Veen, "I don't connect myself to philosophies or politics. I prefer to think of my music as an exhibition of my aesthetic ideals, and to attach myself to something would only constrain me. And while minimalism is a pleasant aesthetic, it appears to have saturated our culture to the point where it has lost all context and meaning." Hmm--I think our culture could do with more minimalism, especially the well-ordered, beautifully expressed sort conjured by Jirku himself. DAVE SEGAL
Mon June 21 at the Mirabeau Room, 529 Queen Anne Ave N, 217-0654, 9 pm-2 am, 21+.
