Jandek – Glasgow Sunday (Corwood 0779)

recorded live at The Arches, Glasgow Scotland, October 17, 2004

Corwood Industries
PO Box 15375
Houston TX 77220

This CD was my introduction to the music of Jandek. I have only recently became aware of him. I stumbled upon his name in an internet search for "outsider" music on a website for Irwin Chusid’s book "Songs in the Key of Z".

Though Sterling Richard Smith has been making and releasing records since 1978, this documents his first ever, live performance. It has been one year since this earth shattering, groundbreaking, impossible to imagine concert took place. The representative from Corwood sang and played guitar, joined by Richard Youngs on bass and Alexander Neilson on drums.

Before you pop this bad boy into the CD player you have to toss your entire book of expectations. It demands that you step out of your comfortable little box and into the world of thing one and thing two. It compels you to open your mind and set aside your preconceived notions of what music is, what it should be and how it is functions. Please check your ideas on beat, chord progression, melody, harmony, structure, even known chords, at the door. There are no hummable melodies, these are electronic tone poems. This is not easy listening but somehow strangely soothing.

Jandek’s guitar playing is like wind chimes from hell. He turns the instrument’s voice into angular, jagged, shattered clusters of stark broken shards. In his hands the guitar becomes a textural generation machine. His vocal delivery is a moaning, howling yelp, passionately unconcerned, more spoken word than singing. The songs are fractured safety glass diamonds of complex emotion being mined from the cold, bleak, desolate depths.

Will you like this? Will you enjoy this? Probably not, more likely you will hate this record. This is the kind of music you will hate, not simply dislike.

But if you want to stretch your boundaries, if you want your tenuous foundation to be shaken to its rocky roots, if you want a bona fide experience, if you want to test yourself, if you want to shear the top of your head right off, get this. Do I like this music? Yes, I do.

http://tisue.net/jandek/