MySpace Trawl – Jong Pang
November 29th, 2007 at 15:00 by Matthew Laidlow
We head over to Scandinavia – a place we have visited on previous occasions - to bring you this week’s offering. In particular we are looking at this Danish artist Jong Pang who is, um, amazingly from Denmark.
Like the majority of people who aren’t from this a particular part of the world – or maybe it's just the ignorant English - we don’t know much about Danish music. Well, that is a lie. Remember the Danish bacon advert? A stone-cold classic in the making and one that was never given a proper release. Every time we munch on a bacon roll the song enters our minds. So fingers crossed that the work of Jong Pong will become our new favourite Danish sound, relegating a song about slaughtered pigs into second place.
The music on Jong Pang's page is described as Religious/Experimental and Pop. At this point a swathe of you are probably thinking “Oh no! It’s religious music! It’ll just be full of crap acoustic guitars being strummed with as much effort as rubbing your hand on a bed of nails with people telling us how awesome their God is”.
But we are glad to report that this is not the case. Yes, it's religious. However, if we go crazy for a minute, we could say that all music is religious in some way or another to people. In a nutshell, religion brings happiness to people. Music does the same. While some gig-goers may not pray in a church or a mosque, they will come together at a venue to appreciate a band perform. All uniting as one under one roof, or in a muddy field. Ooh, that was a bit deep wasn’t it?
So with that out the way let’s turn our attentions to our featured artist Jong Pang who oddly isn’t called that at all. We hope we’re not busted a well-guarded secret here, but the real name of the artist in question is Anders Rhedin. Who unfortunately has a surname like current X Factor sailorboy Rhydian. He should stick to his alias.
Despite there being a lack of songs for you to hear on Jong Pang's MySpace page, the quality is definitely there. It’s really not about quantity. These two tracks shit all over some of the gash we’ve been subjected to lately. In some regards listening to these songs is almost like watching a striptease. Let us explain. We love both the songs, but afterwards we were left very surprised when we found out that they were not finished. Both the songs are just 'premix' versions. If this is what they sound like in a form that the artist is unhappy with, we can’t wait to hear the result when more magic is weaved in to them.
A House In Heartbeats begins with what sounds like a warped-sounding children’s toy. Quickly, a sweeping guitar takes over from this odd opening sound before more swirling and dynamic sounds are added. Essentially this comes across as a post rock song that someone like Mogwai would be making if they were a bit angrier. All created by the same person, this could easily be passed off as the work of a band and it’s hard to believe one individual is responsible for this. And this is still the unfinished version. To us it sounds perfectly fine as it is, and would probably not benefit from much more fiddling.
Small Cut Sensations has a sound that makes think of Grandaddy. With a floaty sound echoing in and out throughout the track, it’s the lack of some burly Californians that are missing from this song. We also get to hear a vocal in this track which shows us that it’s not just about creating instrumental tracks with wispy hidden words like in A House In Heartbeats. With the music being in development, it is clear to us that this fine musician takes deep pride in his work and is in no hurry to rush out something that he is not happy with presenting to the world.
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