Jena Paradies - Last Nacht - 2006

Biography of Jena Paradies

Jena Paradies is a vehicle for electronic musician Cornel Novac. Cornel spent his childhood in Moldova, a former building block of the Soviet Union. In the eastern block, his access to music was rather limited, but he relished the occasional mix show he was able to pick up on short wave radio from stations in Germany, Finland, and the UK. With no song titles or records available to him early on, Cornel had to be creative and started producing his first tracks on his brother's Yamaha DX7.

After finishing high school in Moldova, Cornel relocated to the United States to attend college. He spent four years in Tennessee, studying political science and German by day, and experimenting with sound and rhythm by night. During this time, he also traveled to Germany, spending time in Berlin and Frankfurt and frequenting places like Hardwax, Neue Berliner Initiative, and Tresor. In Germany, he absorbed the sounds of labels like Chain Reaction, Audio.NL, Autoplate, NBI and many others. Despite his influences, Cornel maintains an immediately distinctive, unrelenting style.

Jena Paradies incorporates treated samples, reverb-soaked dub lines, loops that slip in and out of phase, turntable static and lowercase electronics, all sequenced to create a strange, beautiful and intense sound world that stays poised between impulse and order. His past work includes a self-titled record on T.I.V.S. and a collaborative installation at the Fugitive Art Center in Nashville. He now lives in Atlanta and works on refining his approach to experimental techno.