Jandek returns to OTO for a 3-day residency after a sold out performance from the Corwood Industries representative with Alex Neilson, John Edwards and Byron Wallen in April 2013.

We have been told by the Coordinator of Corwood Industries that "For the Jandek residency we have chosen 3 USA musicians, who are generally not known, to accompany the Representative from Corwood. This hearkens back to the early days of Jandek pre-concert exposure." You know as much as we do!

"One of the great things about this new live incarnation of Jandek (studio albums are now sporadic, especially when stacked against the tower of live releases he’s put out since 2005), is that it is nigh-on impossible to predict what you will get when he performs. This is an artist for whom preconceptions should never apply, and if they are, you’re liable to end up feeling a tad stupid. It also means that every one of his aforementioned live albums are worth purchasing, because the differences between, say, Glasgow Friday and Manhattan Tuesday are remarkable, albeit tied together by his unique, atonal singing voice and skeletal song structures… When the set finishes, I’m left desperate for more, just so I can be a part of his strange, unsettling and beautiful universe a bit longer. At that point, the mystery around the man matters little, only the music, which, no matter who Jandek plays with, or how he approaches his sound, stylistically, is unique." - Joseph Burnett, The Liminal (review of Jandek's performance at Cafe OTO, April 2013)

JANDEK

Starting with 'Ready for The House' in 1978 (originally credited to The Units), Corwood Industries have now issued more than 60 'Jandek' recordings, including live recordings made at the concerts that have been held since Jandek's unannounced Glasgow appearance in 2004. Prior to that he had never appeared in public or given any interviews and various theories had been put forward about the who/what/when and how of his considerable - of properly hermetic and sometimes indecipherable - oeuvre.

"And what does his music sound like? Like pure desolation. Jandek is not just solo but profoundly alone on most of his recordings, picking distractedly at a guitar tuned to no particular notes, moaning in no particular key about thinking and love and wandering around and staying in the same place and God. Beyond that, there's just emptiness -- each off-key ping floats out separately into black space. Sometimes Jandek sounds as if he'd internalized the grimmest death-letter blues of the '20s and is pulling them back out of himself, thoroughly dismembered, hair by hair. His songs have no choruses, no hooks, no melodies, no rhythms, no internal progression, nothing but the inexorable Chinese-water-torture plod of Samuel Beckett's The Unnameable: "I can't go on, I'll go on." ... Compared to "real" pop music, Jandek's songs are terrifyingly ugly; in the context of his decades of persistence, the range and mass of his work, they become intensely beautiful and meaningful. They are absolute, pure self-expression, an unfocused, unlit snapshot of his entire adult life." - Douglas Wolk

www.corwoodindustries.com
Mystery Man: The Jandek Story by Douglas Wolk



PAT THOMAS

Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style - embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91) and in the trio AND (with Noble) – with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.

"Sartorially shabby as Thomas may be, and on first impression even rather stolid, he has a somewhat imperious charisma that’s immediately amplified when he starts to play. Unlike other pianists whose virtuosity seems to be racing ahead of their thought processes Thomas always seems supremely in command of his gift, and his playing, no matter how free and ready to tangle with abstraction, always carries a charge of authoritative exactitude." The Jazzmann

lll人 (PAUL ABBOTT / SEYMOUR WRIGHT / DAICHI YOSHIKAWA)

“convulsing but controlled, reigned and railed, concentrated not opposing between the 3. Sound bending to include others. to be met and slightly connected. Semi-soothed in trilling galloping galactic space” - KiO



“There are some globs of clay inside a cage. The cage is badly made from a gridded, rough, metal wire. It is suspended from the ceiling of a living room … inside the cage, above the clay, is a small glass box with a neat funnel protruding from its base.” - c-Ban

lll人 website
Seymour Wright website
Paul Abbott website
Daichi Yoshikawa website

CAM DEAS

Cam Deas, born and now based in London, has been exploring a so-called ‘Post-Takoma’ terrain through his 12 string acoustic guitar explorations, working between composition and free-improvisation employing a legion of extended techniques. His last solo full length album, Quadtych, was hailed as 'a major UK guitar statement' by David Keenan (Volcanic Tongue/The Wire) and 'a quantum step forward after a decade of Fahey acolytion' by Keith Fullerton Whitman. For the past 5 years Deas has toured heavily across Europe, performing hundreds of concerts. He has been heard collaborating in the studio and live with the likes of Steffen Basho-Junghans, Ignatz, Chie Mukai, Jack Allett, Sheldon Siegel, C. Joynes, Chuck Johnson and many others.

This set will see Deas further his sonic exploration of the 12 string acoustic guitar, using it as a sculptural wooden frame to an electronic music. The exploratory acoustic sounds will be processed and manipulated through a series of analogue synthesis patches to create evolving sonic environments, through a structurally composed part-improvisation, manifesting in dense harmonic and resonant textures, uncurbed percussive attacks and swirling rhythmic patterns in an attempt to connect the sound worlds of Takoma-school guitar and electro-acoustic music in a purely live situation.