However, if anyone deserves an inflated ego, it's this guy right here. Known to friends/family/Big Brother as Nick Stanifer, he wrote music, played guitar and basically spearheaded the tragically short lived Sacramento glam-prog supergroup known as Order of the Golden Mirror...as well as play on and produce the bombastic aural adventure that is Prism Riot. The fact is, although he doesn't act the least bit like it, JANG may very well be underground experimental rock's next big name.
His latest solo offering, Scissor Palace, certainly does live up to its title. If music can be compared to tangible, physical art, whereas most albums are like paintings or photos, Scissor Palace is like a humongous, wall-spanning mixed-media collage. That's the easiest way to put it. Apparently, these are all bits and pieces of music recorded over the last few years that have been chopped and edited into...well, this. If ever there was an album seemingly designed to be listened to on "shuffle"...
There are 25 tracks here, very few pieces over two minutes in length. To try and describe the album as a whole would be almost futile. There are no genres to fall back on here. This is music for fourth dimensional beings with ADHD. So I'm going to try something new on Informed Conformist and listen to this album track-by-track and try my best to describe what each one brings to mind. Take from it what you will. Oh, and I invite you to listen along!
1. Arrival - Distorted drum fills accompany an angular guitar riff. Sounds like a fanfare. A gong sounds, and we're off.
2. Zeta Reticuli - Driving riff rock gives way to dreamy, bubbly synth and then just kind of ends...
3. Slivery Whine - Programmed drums skitter in some strange meter, while elevator jazz keyboards lay down an alternately soothing synth wash. Then what sounds like a completely random sax/synth melody mixes things up nicely.
4. Drag Them Stones - A 5/8 pattern with some organ and an epic, soaring synth and guitar melody. Then everything kinda freaks out at 38 seconds and ends suddenly (as most of these tracks do).
5. Discordant Prolifics Dustbin - More crazy programmed drums, more soothing keyboard patches, more frantic guitar. Similar to track 3...they may be blood relatives.
6. Altar of Gibraltar - Sounds like an organ and a tape reel having sadomasochistic sex...and then giving birth to a small bundle of cheez-funk.
7. Dig Up Bodies To Sell To Doctors - Aha, our first real "song". Phased out guitar, a cartoon "boing" sound effect and then...a pretty little organ interlude. Drums kick in and everything goes into double time. Sounds like Beethoven on methamphetamine. Song returns and wraps up nicely.
8. I Feel That Mental Breakdown A-Comin' - Scary video game music from the final boss' lair...if performed by a hybrid King Crimson/Frank Zappa supergroup .
9. Mail Order Bride - Grinding, delay soaked programmed drums.
10. Jagged Edges of Shattered Vinyl - Sounds exactly like the title suggests. Intro reminds me a bit of Tom Morello.
11. A Black Cat Throws Salt Over Its Shoulder - A brief drum workout, some tweedling guitar, and then an adorable kitty cat sound. Meow!
12. 28th Dimension - My favorite track. This one's in 7/8, possibly my favorite meter. Sounds like everything is peaceful in the land of the frolicking pixies...until some awful portal to hell opens and a dark shadow castle takes form in the dense, poisonous mist. The pixies warily take note, but continue with their happy party anyway.
13. Thing Of Being - Some of these tracks are hard to describe...this is just one of them. Starts in familiar, frantic territory, but suddenly dissolves into a spacey Eastern groove, reminiscent of The Doors' more psychedelic moments, before it all comes crashing back down on your head.
14. Smoke Break - Another favorite of mine. Out of left field comes a beautiful, layered acoustic melody, accompanied by shakers and bongo drums. Like the title suggests, a breath of fresh air...or a breath of SOMETHING, anyway.
15. Theme For Anvils - A pretty little four-note keyboard melody, reminiscent of the melody to The Symbolick Jews' "I Disappointed My Parents". Not complete plagiarism, but an interesting coincidence.
16. Windfall - More video game music...the intro is straight up Mega Man 2. As usual, this one doesn't sit still for long, and it's over just as you really start to get into it.
17. AYBABTU - Picks up nicely where track 16 ends, and features a really cool warbly piano effect.
18. Who Is Clock Maker? - Clockwork chimes and programmed drums run through some sort of ring modulator setting.
19. Chattering Teeth - This is straight up cowboy music that seems equally inspired by the Wild West as it does 80's pop (I was gonna say equal parts Tortoise and Toto, but it seemed like a stretch). Effective use of mouth harp here, which is an alarmingly underused instrument in modern rock music, if you ask me.
20. Something In My Eye - 8 seconds of cut up babyish vocal samples over a dance-floor beat. Yes.
21. It's Your Funeral, Round Eye - If a gamelan were abducted mid-performance and imprisoned in a floating glass bubble by pixelated aliens from the Space Invaders arcade game, it might sound a little like this.
22. Garbage Man - What sounds like Muzak played over a belching dragon.
23. Twitch of the Panic Nerve - Even more crazy, chopped up sounds...and then what sounds like a UFO revving up for takeoff.
24. Snow Falling On Eyelashes - Equal parts gentle beauty and foreboding darkness, this 3 minute piece sounds like an unused Danny Elfman composition from "Edward Scissorhands", which is really cool. For some reason, reminds me of a snow globe.
25. Soy Bean Rights Activist - The sound of the atoms that make up your brain matter converging together at once and then imploding into nothingness. After 12 seconds, the chaos subsides...and it's over.
So yeah, Scissor Palace is as brilliant as it is completely random. If you weren't compelled to listen along as you read the track-by-track breakdown, I'm not so sure I want to know you. Anyway, this is definitely not the sort of music you'd want to play for your grandmother, unless she did a lot of weird experimental drugs in the early 60's. Grandmothers ARE getting weirder, I suppose...
Personally, I had a great deal of fun listening to JANG's album. It feels a hell of a lot shorter than it really is, probably because it hops around so much and always keeps you guessing. This is definitely one that gets better (and weirder) with each listen, especially if you remember to shuffle the track list. Keep and eye on JANG, friends...and if you do like what you hear, be sure to check out his other albums, they're all refreshingly ambitious. -Matt
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