Persons
Rainer Straschill,
author of this web site, is the project leader for JANUS. He provides all the compositions and arrangements, is responsible for most of the recording, the mastering and all coordination and administration involved. Furthermore, most of the material is performed by himself - all trombone parts, some soprano and alto saxophone tracks, keyboards as well as the complete drum and synth programming, and even some percussion. He has become infamous for his bizzare taste and habits, including uncontrolled spontaneous improvisations on all these instruments, which actually got him fired from more than one group
Wolfgang Schlick,
linguist and multi-instrumentalist-reedman, will be known to most Munich residents as being alto saxophonist for the soul-combo Poets of Rhythm. For the JANUS project, the fan of the likes of Eric Dolphy, Roland Kirk and John Coltrane plays the flute solo in "The Wizard" and most notably the extended bass clarinet solo on "Ein neuer Hut für Paul Dirac".
Andreas Stocker
might without exaggeration be called the new rising star on the heaven of the classical clarinet. His strong musicality and sense for other musical forms has been proven to the audiences in several concerts with the AG Neue Musik, where his collaboration with Straschill started. For this ensemble he played lead parts in the world premieres for several Straschill works. From this collaboration, a live recording of "3 Phantasien aus dem Notenbüchlein für coole Instrumente" can be found on JANUS.
John Benedic Pipebender-Appleshyme
is not a gifted saxophone player (which he proves with his baritone performances on JANUS), and he is furthermore one of the leading specialists for constructing absurd, non-working, senseless, ugly and expensive prototypes of so-called "Birnhorns" and other reed-driven conical resonators. He illegally copied and drastically deteriorated several original designs by Adolphe Sax. His dedication to JANUS does not only include performances on "Weißbier" and "Summer Evenings in Niederbayern", he was also responsible for the maintenance of both Rainer´s and Wolfi´s woodwinds.
Guido Kremer
Those who already listened to the CD of the Zeitfalte project know Guido Kremer (picture) as a talented and versatile drummer. This is also proven by his performances for the JANUS project, for which he played and recorded drum parts for Euphemistic and Weißbier. This collaboration is actually based on a "virtual friendship": Guido has never seen any of the persons involved with this project in natura.
A very recent addition to the list of JANUS contributors are the members of the German rock group lebendig. The three-headed core of the ensemble joined Straschill for a spontaneous, collective improvisation, contained on Metamorphosen.
As one of the original founders of the experimental rock group NO MEMBERS and as co-writer of the tune "Loisachtal", Jan "Scotty" Bejenke of course has to belong to the featured artists on JANUS - although he never sat in for the recordings. His guitar performances found in "The Loisachtal Variations" have been salvaged from old concert or four-track-demo recordings from the NO MEMBERS-era.
A contribution of an entirely different nature has been received from D.C. Becker - the biologist and sailplane-afficionado provided the art for the CD's front cover.
Only small contributions have also been added by Antje "Pitbull" Juchem (see picture), Michael "Duschl" Thammer, Wolle Müller-Gülich and Anna Bejenke. Pitbull is responsible for "Histerie & Angst" on "Prolog" plus several "dirty words" in "Metamorphosen", Duschl provided (also for the prolog) the "Hints regarding temporal order", Wolle did the "totally stupid humming" heard in Euphemistic, and Anna (sister of forementioned Scotty, sat in for bg vocals on the final movement of "The Loisachtal Variations".