Objet Trouvé and Musique Concrète are the cornerstones of Jannik Giger’s Opus Fatalis. Similar to the founder of Musique Concrète Pierre Schaeffer at the end of the 1940s, Jannik Giger collects sounds, but instead of using these the way he finds them he alienates them beyond recognition. This makes it impossible to make out where the sounds originate from. They are not, like common in Musique Concrète, field recordings but rather already recorded sounds and samples. All found and compiled from numerous recordings of diverse eras.
Basically Jannik Giger samples and distorts passages and parts of already existing works. He enhances them with analogue and digital synths, electric guitars and drums all played by himself. Add to this the often but subtly used vocals and the listener is left in the dark as to where all the sounds originate from, whether they are sampled or original material. All the fragments add up to one homogenic whole. Jannik Giger: «I never had the idea of a collage or to quote. What interests me is the formability and vitality of the source material. This makes the music unique, because normally sampling is always heard.That is not the case in Opus Fatalis. Here the music sounds organic, almost like a mutated orchestra. I tried to find a uniqueness in the sounds, to reinterpret and translate them into my own musical language.»

Opus Fatalis is a quiet and bleak work. Even though it plays with a lot of effects it’s not gimmiky. It conveys a tranqillity and easiness, but also a positive kind of trepidation that, referring to pictures, is reminiscent of films by Jim Jarmush or Aki Kaurismäki.