Glasgow Sunday is a major Jandek release for a host of reasons. Specifically, it's a recording of the first ever Jandek live performance that took place unannounced on the second night of the Instal festival in Glasgow, Scotland on October 17th, 2004, when the man also known as Houston resident Sterling R. Smith made the first public appearance of his 26 year recording career, simultaneously quashing three decades worth of speculation while inspiring a whole bunch more. But the main thing that makes Glasgow Sunday such an important document has less to do with how it relates to Smith's personal mythos and more to do with how it inaugurates a group that already looks to be one of the most formally inventive units of the modern age. Between them, the trio of Smith on guitar and vocals, bassist Richard Youngs and drummer Alex Neilson have birthed a free music with an internal dynamic and shared musical language as singular and historically unparalleled as late-20th Century behemoths like Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity trio, Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha, Harry Pussy and Musica Transonic. Crucially, Glasgow Sunday is a group record. Although the actual circumstances of how the group came together are necessarily vague, it looks like Youngs and Neilson were recommended to Smith rather than requested by him. The first time they ever played together was actually earlier on the same day of the concert. But you'd never know it from the recordings. What this official recording reinforces - even more so than on the widely circulated bootleg and on the actual night itself - is that the terms of their musical relationship were sealed the instant they began to play. Smith's current guitar form is most immediately related to the series of recordings he made between 1982 and 1987, a run of wild, electric sides initiated by Chair Beside A Window and terminated by Blue Corpse that occasionally featured still-unidentified collaborators like vocalist “Nancy” and drummer “John” and were characterised by bouts of ferocious atonal guitar. But here he digs deeper and harder into the magic confluence of overtones encouraged by the more esoteric open tunings. His chords sound like they're augmented with barbed wire and his soloing - of which there's plenty - is somewhere between Keiji Haino's dense, clean guitar work on Fushitsusha's John Zorn-produced album Allegorical Misunderstanding, and Harry Pussy guitarist Bill Orcutt circa “Nazi USA”. Youngs plays electric bass with a tremolo pulse that sounds a bit like Holger Czukay and the way he pilots odd, beautiful notes straight to the heart of the individual tracks is particularly fearless. Drummer Alex Neilson is the real wildcard. In recent years he has become the most in-demand improvising drummer in Scotland and his playing here is particularly key in terms of defining the basic heft of the sound. Beyond even the bizarre physical resemblance - several people on the night asked if it was Jandek's son that was playing the drums - there's obviously a deep level of rapport between the two and during the instrumental breaks Smith seems to be soloing more in relation to Neilson's tonal and rhythmic suggestions than Youngs' harmonic ones. A less confident musician would have simply hung back and supported Smith as innocuously as possible but Neilson takes it upon himself to push the music somewhere else, alternating explosive poly-rhythms with moments of pure textural abandon and accelerated breaks. At one point he even stands up and starts to sing. As with every Jandek project, Glasgow Sunday feels like an extended investigation into a single colour or state, both emotionally, lyrically and sonically. Each track draws its deepest architecture from archetypal blues forms, with vocal lulls alternating with extended chord solos and emphatic rhythms. Like the late Albert Ayler, Jandek has a way of hi-jacking the basest/purest of folk-forms and extrapolating them into the heavens - or in this case, personal hells. Lyrically there are several references to water, seas and drowning, lots of reds and blues, and some of the tracks are unrelentingly bleak, reading like long, airless litanies of hurt. But there's also plenty of black humour and at points you can't help but feel that Jandek is poking fun at his own image and playing to the crowd. The moment when he erupts with the line “I made the decision to get real wild” sees the whole audience explode into cheers. Anyone expecting an obscure shot of a Glasgow landmark for the traditionally-enigmatic cover photograph will be disappointed in that it seems to feature an unremarkable street somewhere in the USA judging by the style of the streetlights, the type of cars and the side of the road on which they're parked. Even more disappointing is the fact that although the name of the venue that hosted the concert is included in the text, no credit is given to either Youngs or Neilson. Since this recording the trio have reconvened for three further performances, one of which, in Newcastle, took the mode of Glasgow Sunday further into realms of compositional and improvisatory flux. The second Glasgow show, performed the night after the Newcastle one, saw Youngs switch to acoustic bass and Smith to piano and vocals and while it wasn't as sonically interesting as the dates that preceded it, it arguably raised the emotional ante even further. Who would've thought it? Jandek, it turns out, is a group.

Totally ass-blasting wild Jandek side from 1987 crossing insane avant-blues rip-ups with Jandek getting into some howling, gutbucket vocal moves and some great post-Shaggs caveman drums. Killer series of almost-hysterical Nancy/Jandek trade-offs and some lonesome power-crying too. The greatest manifestation of Jandek’s high-rolling late 80s style. From laugh-out-loud great – “Painted My Teeth”, “I Want To Know Why” – through beautifully confused reverie. Highly recommended.

2003 recording of electric bass/vocal dunt.

2004 bass/vocal album from Jandek, with 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 levelling 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.

Stunning looking DVD of the first solo acoustic/vocals London show from Jandek, as close as you’re gonna get to a live version of a ‘classic’ stripped down Jandek performance. Recorded at St. Giles In The Fields, London, October 18th 2005. There’s an undeniable thrill in being able to see Sterling Smith perform alone, it’s like having alla those early records laid a little more bare. Excellent.

DVD edition featuring both sets from this trio show with Sterling Smith on guitar and vocals, Chris Corsano on drums and Matt Heyner on bass, live at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, New York, September 7th, 2005. The sound is closer to the 'classic' Neilson/Youngs live blats but with a more straightahead garage/punk feel, with Sterling playing some of his oddest electric guitar downs while Heyner moves from groaning electric bass monoliths across the first set to quiet, semi-audible acoustic bass on the second. The second set is consequently the weirdest, with the extra space generated by Heyner fully inhabited by very minimal guitar work from Sterling and some oddly dramatised lyrical set-ups. Corsano plays it pretty straight for the bulk, riding behind Sterling's guitar like a steamroller, and at points the vocal delivery combines with the overall bounce of the rhythm section to birth something that seems to owe more to The Minutemen than any sort of avant blues tradition. The songs are great, moving from devastating emotionally wrought confessionals through to funny situational set pieces and Sterling really stretches out on vocals and is obviously enjoying the performance.

Fantastic new double CD from Jandek that sees him revisit the group set-up he had on the equally dazzling Portland Thursday set, with Sterling Smith on guitar and vocals, Sam Coombes on bass, Emil Amos on drums and the twin vocals of Liz Harris aka Grouper and Jessica Dennison. Sterling apparently requested two female vocalists who “look similar” and their voices are also perfectly complimentary. They’re featured on four tracks, “Long Time Coming”, “Across From Me”, “No One Around” and “Like You Love Me”. “Long Time Coming” is especially bruised, a forlorn, passionate embrace of hollowed-out Venusian blues worthy of Suzanne Langille. Elsewhere the rhythm section of Coombes and Amos – admittedly not, on paper, a dreamteam pairing – lock into some of the most dynamic and heavy groove-based rock of Sterling’s back catalogue, driving the pace so hard that at points – on tracks like “Cathy Sue” and the 20 minute “Yes Dear” – they approach the collapsing universe style of prime Kousokuya. Sterling’s guitar playing seems more fleet and effortless for it and his vocals wrap themselves all the way around your head with some profound downerisms. Will be living inside this one for a long time to come, another major highlight of Jandek’s live phase. Highly recommended!