Concrete Playground

Often atonal and frequently frightening, the Jandek aesthetic lies somewhere between being a monstrous bastard of the Delta blues tradition, a forlorn, cacophonous No Wave homage (a one-man Birthday Party on libidinal control medication?), and perhaps Tim Buckley’s Lorca album, if it had been recorded in the Catacombs of Odessa with absolutely nothing around for stimulation bar some cheap opiates, a handful of barely legible letters by a long-since departed lover, and some early Swans LPs. His chthonic lyricism and performance approach absent of any poise, self-consciousness or engagement with concurrent musical trends has cultivated a small yet fanatical group of followers and spawned sixty-something albums over the past three decades.

But before this article inadvertently illustrates Kurt Cobain’s suspicion that ‘Jandek's not pretentious, but only pretentious people like his music,’ let us discuss the few facts known about Jandek: He had never appeared in public before 2006. Many believe him to be Sterling Smith, a white-collar resident of Houston, though this has been confirmed by neither the artist nor the mysterious Corwood Industries firm that controls his discography. He has only ever given two interviews. His brushes with public light have been slim to say the least, though he did feature alongside the Shaggs, Daniel Johnston and Joe Meek in Irwin Chusid’s Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious
World of Outsider Music.

This will be Jandek's maiden tour of Australia, and who knows if or when he will come out of hiding again. So if you like the sound of a middle-aged man howling existential poetry over dissonant and minimalist free-jazz — and let’s face it, that’s all of us — this event will be once-in-a-lifetime material.