Six And Six
Jandek album #2, Six And Six. Released in 1981.
For an album that was released three years after it's predecessor, this is not very different. Could it have possibly been recorded at nearly the same time as the first, and just held back until he could afford to manufacture this LP? Strange, to say the least.
Once again it's all songs sounding like the same guitar at the same sitting, with the same out-of-tune open strings. The variations between them are interesting, though. There's a slower tune like "Can I See Your Clock" that has all singular picked string notes as it's accompaniment, then the next song "Wild Strawberries" has Jandek wildly strumming away at the entire set of strings (maybe less than six) with bare fingers, so hard the pitches bend.
Every song is Jandek singing and acoustic guitar. Lyrically very down, mellow and depressing. There are conceptual continuity clues to forthcoming song titles and album titles as well. But then I noticed something different.
This experiment is not the first time I have heard Jandek, as I've told you earlier. I also have some of Jandek's vinyl releases that I have converted to CD here at home for my own personal enjoyment(?). When I was listening to this CD and the first one as well, I noticed the sound was really different. It sounded like the music was being reproduced from a poorly encoded MP3 file, because of all these strange audio artifacts in the music that would not have existed back in the early eighties. So I pulled out my CD of the vinyl rip, and it's easily apparent that this album was drastically remastered to remove tape hiss. The LP sounds like it was recorded with a cassette microphone sitting on top of a cardboard box. The CD sounds like it was taken from a better quality recording, and gobs of reverb were added to mask any other audio defects that may exist.
The recording has also been edited. In the song "Point Judith" on the original album, there is a point where the microphone gets bumped, or knocked to the floor, and it is as jarring as it is hilarious. On this CD, it is entirely edited out. Same with a bump of the mic on the last cut, "Delinquent Words", and where Jandek's breath hits the mic and produces a "pffh" noise. The fade is also slower. I'd absolutely be floored if this was a re-recording.
But then again, there's a great line at the end of the album: "Dust enters into all being, and man who came from dust, to dust shall he return." Sing on, Jandek. You are the God of the Avant Garde.
More to come.
For an album that was released three years after it's predecessor, this is not very different. Could it have possibly been recorded at nearly the same time as the first, and just held back until he could afford to manufacture this LP? Strange, to say the least.
Once again it's all songs sounding like the same guitar at the same sitting, with the same out-of-tune open strings. The variations between them are interesting, though. There's a slower tune like "Can I See Your Clock" that has all singular picked string notes as it's accompaniment, then the next song "Wild Strawberries" has Jandek wildly strumming away at the entire set of strings (maybe less than six) with bare fingers, so hard the pitches bend.
Every song is Jandek singing and acoustic guitar. Lyrically very down, mellow and depressing. There are conceptual continuity clues to forthcoming song titles and album titles as well. But then I noticed something different.
This experiment is not the first time I have heard Jandek, as I've told you earlier. I also have some of Jandek's vinyl releases that I have converted to CD here at home for my own personal enjoyment(?). When I was listening to this CD and the first one as well, I noticed the sound was really different. It sounded like the music was being reproduced from a poorly encoded MP3 file, because of all these strange audio artifacts in the music that would not have existed back in the early eighties. So I pulled out my CD of the vinyl rip, and it's easily apparent that this album was drastically remastered to remove tape hiss. The LP sounds like it was recorded with a cassette microphone sitting on top of a cardboard box. The CD sounds like it was taken from a better quality recording, and gobs of reverb were added to mask any other audio defects that may exist.
The recording has also been edited. In the song "Point Judith" on the original album, there is a point where the microphone gets bumped, or knocked to the floor, and it is as jarring as it is hilarious. On this CD, it is entirely edited out. Same with a bump of the mic on the last cut, "Delinquent Words", and where Jandek's breath hits the mic and produces a "pffh" noise. The fade is also slower. I'd absolutely be floored if this was a re-recording.
But then again, there's a great line at the end of the album: "Dust enters into all being, and man who came from dust, to dust shall he return." Sing on, Jandek. You are the God of the Avant Garde.
More to come.
posted by Bill @ 2:40 PM
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