Jandek

Jandek is the recording name of Sterling Smith (born 1945), a Houston-based musician whose project stands as one of the most enigmatic in American music. Since 1978 he has released more than 120 albums on his own label, Corwood Industries, sold only by mail order and later online, with almost no biographical information offered. His recordings favour spare, atonal guitar, open tunings, and mumbled or howled vocals over minimal, often absent chord structures, closer to outsider blues than folk convention. He gave his first interview in 2004, the same year he made an unannounced live debut at Glasgow's Instal Festival with Richard Youngs and Alex Neilson, ending decades of public absence.