Browse by Label: CORWOOD INDUSTRIES

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Ready For The House
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0739

There were plenty of significant events in 1978, ("You're The One That I Want" by John Travolta & Olivia Newton John was quite a popular track, for example), and one of the most low-key yet significant events was the debut LP release on the Corwood Industries label out of Houston, TX. Mysteriously enough it came out under the name "The Units", but it was obviously a singular vision and not a band. That individual would come to be more commonly known as Jandek, and a total of 40+ albums have been issued on Corwood to date. In 1978 however, there was no telling what was to come. Ready For The House was a mostly acoustic guitar/vocal record, of ethereal, shambling post-blues form. It set the stage for one the most individualistic and fascinating bodies of work in contemporary music. The original LP was casually issued in a beautiful color sleeve, featuring a mundane but striking image of a living room chair & table (replicated with almost pop-art brilliance on this CD). No other information was ever offered. As it remains today. Ready For The House sounded like no other record, and it's doubtful that more than a handful of copies were sold at the time (promotional copies sent to out radio stations and reviewers were more voluminous). A second Jandek album wouldn't come out till 1981. By the mid-80s a wealth of documentation had occurred and the early Corwood albums became notoriously unavailable just as people were finally getting up the gumption to consider buying them. This record has been "in demand" for over a decade now and Corwood has finally caved in and reissued it proper. Find out what you've been missing for the last 25 years!

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Ready For The House
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	LP
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	COR 0739LP

"The 1978 release of Corwood Industries #0739, Ready For The House, began one of the most compelling, disturbed, and singular legacies in musical history. In the 30 years since this unique debut, Jandek has released 53 albums of mournful, atonal music that continues to defy classification and accessibility. And while the past three decades of intense productivity have yielded a depth of discussion, a handful of legendary live performances and even a film documentary, no amount of time or experience can prepare a listener for the experience of Ready For The House. Beyond stark, beyond oblique, beyond outsider, the first Jandek LP (originally credited to The Units) explores musical territories no one even knew existed, with just a hollowed-out voice and a lonely, detuned guitar. In 1985, it had infamously sold less than ten of the 1000 copies originally pressed, however by 1999, when it was issued on CD, the vinyl had completely disappeared, with original copies changing hands for hundreds of dollars. This exact vinyl repress on Corwood Industries, is the first time Ready For The House has been available on vinyl for nearly 20 years, finally giving collectors and fans the opportunity to own one of the most peculiar, solitary, and strangely magnetic records of all time."

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Six And Six
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0740

2005 remastered version. The 2nd Corwood album, reissued on CD. Originally issued in 1981, this was the first actual album to be entitled to an artist named Jandek (the first Corwood album, 0739, was credited to the Units -- although that practice has been abandoned in the CD domain, an epic travesty in the minds of a few hardliners). The cover features a crude black & white photobooth-style portrait of the man we've come to assume as the singer, depicted at his most youthful, ready to accompany the power & glory of the Jandekian muse. Upon it's release Six And Six defined Jandek as a significant album artist (no mere one-shot), featuring some of his most mesmerizing variations of trance-blues, especially the 10-minute centerpiece, "I Knew You Would Leave". Crucial, all round.

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Later On
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0741

The third Jandek album from 1981, reissued for the first time ever. "Another installment in the digitization of the Jandek back catalog, and for those who have never heard his earliest records because of their scarcity, you can now own another piece of the Corwood catalog without having to fend off those cutthroat members of the Jandek 'community'. This record, like Jandek's first (Ready for the House), is comprised of not just basically one chord throughout, but as far as I can tell he barely even touches the fret board of his guitar, using his instrument more for atmosphere and percussion than anything like a 'song'. The usual lyrical motifs of the blues are all over the place, including women, roads, death, and even janitors, which in my tweaked view of the universe hearkens back to Howlin' Wolf's paean to a custodian on his last record ca. 1972 ('Watergate Blues'), and much like the Loren Mazzacane Connors Unaccompanied Acoustic Guitar Improvisations Vols 1-9 1979-1980 box set reissue on Ecstatic Yod, this is proof that something that might be called the blues can be non-formulaic, just undiluted expression, and actually just a skeleton on which to drape a very whacked universe of your very own." -- Billy Kiely

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Living In A Moon So Blue
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0743

Reissue of the 5th Jandek album, originally released in 1982. "The title for this one actually comes from a lyric from his track 'Can I See Your Clock' from his second LP Six And Six, and so one can already see The Artist creating an oeuvre filled with allusions, hints, motifs that really don't point at anything in particular. Herein lies one of Jandek's peculiar charm's: his songs' resilience. We find him in a more 'aggressive' mode here -- singing and playing here like he really 'means it'; therein lies another charm: we are never really sure what he means. All in all, Living In A Moon So Blue is one of his best, the presentation and approach seemingly from a different time altogether, how about some grayish Eastern Bloc country, ca. 1962?" -- Billy Kiely

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Telegraph Melts
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0750

CD reissue of the 12th Jandek album, originally issued in 1986. From Seth Tisue's Jandek web site: "In 'You Painted Your Teeth', Jandek frenziedly harangues an unknown second person: "'Don't paint your teeth! You painted your teeth! DON'T PAINT YOUR TEETH!' The title 'Governor Rhodes' may refer to James A. Rhodes, the Ohio governor who ordered the National Guard into Kent State; the song itself is a sort of incantation with Jandek and 'Nancy' repeating after each other 'Celebrate our love, celebrate our magic, chant with love, chant always,' etc., in endless variations."

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	On The Way
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0755

17th album, originally issued in 1988. Features a darkly obscured color photograph of a drum kit barely illuminated at dusk through a window shade. I'm not sure it really translates on CD, but in original LP form it rated as one of the more staggeringly oblique jackets of all time. Working within blues-rock realms this one features "real" drums, bass, dual electric guitars, a possible guest vocalist on some tracks, etc. "I'll Sit Alone and Think A Lot About You" isn't far from Skip Spence-like detachment. "The most varied and easily-accessed Corwoodian brain-scrambler in a while... Of course, if you pay close attention you discover that the central core is as explosively cathartic as any of Jandek's previous recs." -- Byron Coley

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	One Foot In The North
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0758

20th album, originally issued in 1991. "Electric guitar (sometimes one, sometimes two) and vocals, no woman singer, no acoustic guitar, drums about a third of the time. 'Yellow Pages' is a kind of cousin to 'European Jewel'. 'Alehouse Blues' is a pretty straight electric blues. 'Upon the Grandeur' is built around a very beautiful winding figure on the guitar; there's also a second guitarist and someone thumping along throughout on a kettle drum (?). (At the end you can hear two male voices speaking to each other, off-mike: I can't pick out any words except when one of them says 'What?')." -- Seth Tisue.

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Lost Cause
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0759

Reissue of Jandek's 21st album, originally issued in 1992. "Side one has 7 non-datable tracks of depressed blues-destroying ramble... Early optimism on the opening tracks transmutes into full desolation by the closing hack-gulps at the end... 'The Electric End' is a nineteen-plus minute excursion into frothful extremes. Piercing electro-search guitar, revolutionary ultra-primitive drumming, lost-mind vocalism of real cracked creation and some sort of high end squeal (a penny whistle?) combine in an incredibly wasted fashion."

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Twelfth Apostle
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0760

Reissue of Jandek's 22st album, originally issued in 1993. This had been the final release during Corwood's vinyl era and now with this release, their CD reissue program is at last complete. "The most 'pure' Jandek album since Blue Corpse -- rock and/or blues overtones are basically absent. All-acoustic, one guitar only, no drums, three to four minute songs. Uniquely, a heavy echo effect is added to the guitar on several songs on side two. Mood is thorny, ambivalent, a little impersonal, serious but not depressed like Blue Corpse. This is the first album in Jandek's 'late period'; stylistically, it resembles the CD's that follow, not the LP's that came before." -- Seth Tisue.

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Graven Image
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0761

Repressed. Graven Image was the first Jandek CD (originally released in 1994) and when it went out of print a couple years ago, a whole legion of loafers freaked out and jumped into an extended Ebay clikathon. But now it's back, thanks to Corwood's relentless pursuit of availability.

Jandek is an obscured Texan who has been privately releasing beautiful documents of fractured, internalized song de-con, since the very late 70s. There have been no tours, no interviews, no public appearances but the representation of individualistic creation has never been more perfectly rendered than via theCorwoodd discography. Utilizing guitars (one at time, both acoustic or electric), voice and percussion, this is music from the ultimate void -- vaguely related to genres like folk, blues and avant-garde, but in the end it can only be the sound of Jandek. And there's never been anything else quite like it. There were 22 LPs released by Corwood in the LP era (all reissued on CD now). With Graven Image Corwood moved into the CD era for the first time. Haunting, eternal genius, continued.

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Glad to Get Away
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0762

Jandek is an obscured Texan who has been privately releasing beautiful documents of fractured, internalized song genius, since the very late 70s. There have been no tours, no interviews, no public appearances but the representation of individualistic creation has never been more perfectly rendered than via the Corwood discography. Utilizing guitars (one at time, both acoustic or electric), voice and percussion, this is music from the ultimate void -- vaguely related to genres like folk, blues and avant-garde but in the end it can only be the sound of Jandek. And there's never been anything else quite like it. There were 22 previous LPs released, all of which are now out of print (CD reissues are happening & near complete). Graven Image was Corwood's first CD-only release (now o/p). Glad to Get Away is the 2nd Jandek CD, an all-acoustic masterpiece. Haunting, eternal genius, continued.

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Put My Dream On This Planet
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0767

"Record number twenty-nine in the ever growing oeuvre of Jandek, and it's certainly a head-scratcher. No guitar, no drums, no piano, just him rambling on for a small eternity in a sort of song/speech mode on two lengthy and one very short tracks; all of it sounding kind of like it was recorded though a 15 watt Peavey Bandit amp with a broken reverb spring and a noise-gate pedal. Eerie (some might say annoying or god awful), almost bluesy hiss bathed vocals are separated by some rather lengthy periods of complete silence, covering some of the places and 'feelings' that populate his other records so vividly. Reading into it a bit (for in this place everything means something), we see that his last record ended with 'The Beginning' (!) -- a 15+ vocal-less (!) piano 'meditation' which certainly clouded the waters when it dropped -- which can now be viewed as an intro to this new a capella recording...you get the idea. So then, as concrete poetry it's not so hot, and as some kind of Out Blues piece, it's actually rather dire, but viewed in the microscope of the Jandekian Canon, it's pretty massive, and that's saying something too." -- Billy Kiely

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	The Gone Wait
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0773

35th Jandek album. "The Gone Wait" was a track on 1993's The Twelfth Apostle album, now it's an album title. This has happened before, and will happen again. Five tracks, good titles: "I Went To Hell", "I See The Open Door", "I Was A King", "I Just Might Go Now", "I Found The Right Change". Cover photos features a continuation of the Cork window shopping theme that has developed through the 770 series of Corwood releases. This time: sale pricing. Musically, a new style: acoustic guitar and electric bass duos, with Jandek's vocals teetering into almost-Steve Martin territory.

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Shadow of Leaves
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	CD
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	COR 0774

36th Jandek album. Three long tracks, including the 30 minute title track. "Jandek plays bass again, claims to 'no longer exist,' sings about drinking "mechanically produced beverages," and announces plans to 'think about breathing.' Recently he took a walk. The music seems

improvised but is satisfyingly varied and tracks the varying moods of the vocals closely. During the long piece, moments of abjection or desperation occur, but they pass; mostly the voice we hear is lucid. He's leveling with us. When he sings 'I won't drive my car for the rest of the day,' it's a fact. The most harrowing moment comes during the last track, a love song that turns threatening: 'please take my bait... I want to eat you up... you'll never get away, you won't want to... you don't have a life, you live in me.' The music plunges down to the bottom of the bass' range, but by the last line, the point of view has pulled back again to encompass 'the grand scheme of things.'" -- Seth Tisue.

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Glasgow Sunday
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	DVD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	COR 0779DVD

DVD version. Filmed live at the Arches in Glasgow, Scotland on 10/17/04. NTSC format, theoretically Region 0. Aspect ration: 4:3. As a viewer you get to chose: "Camera 1", "Camera 2" or the "2 camera mix edit." Wow. This DVD features the complete set from Jandek's historic concert in Glasgow, his first ever public performance. The group is a trio, with Richard Youngs on bass and Alex Nielson on drums. The "representative from Corwood" plays a black guitar, wears a black hat and sounds just right. The music is the same as the Glasgow Sunday CD, released one year earlier, but the visuals here are exceptional (in a basic "pro" fashion) and allow all sorts of new & vigorous insights into the Jandek portfolio. No bonus material, no Easter egg.

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Manhattan Tuesday
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	2CD
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	COR 0788

50th Jandek release. Recorded live at the Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan, NY, September 6, 2005. The representative from Corwood plays Korg synthesizers (set to organ-like sounds) and sings; he is accompanied by Loren Connors (electric guitar), Matt Heyner (bass), and Chris Corsano (drums). Disc 2 is entitled: Afternoon Of Insensitivity. Very sympathetic playing from the backing musicians and in general, one of the heaviest Jandek albums in years.

Artist:	JANDEK
Title:	Brooklyn Wednesday
Label:	CORWOOD INDUSTRIES
Format:	4CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	COR 0789

51th Jandek release. The first Jandek 4CD release, in a slipcase, nice presentation. Recorded live at the Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY, September 7th, 2005. This comprehensive release features both sets complete; Set One split up over discs 1 & 2 (78 minutes), with Set Two split up discs 3 & 4 (another 81 minutes). The performers are not listed on the packaging, but history has recorded that the Corwood representative played electric guitar during Set 1 and fretless electric guitar during Set 2. The backing for both was: Matt Heyner (double bass), Chris Corsano (drums).

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