Jangus Kangus

Fortune Cookie is the first wide-scale, above-ground release from Jangus Kangus, LA’s foremost purveyor of imagist garage surf– raw, witty, tuneful, quasi-punk, defiantly indie – and the going concern of Jasmine Sankaran, musician, songwriter, and creative dictatress.

This LP marks a significant leap forward from Sankaran’s previous scrappy DIY releases. Her band is at its most robust yet, with Steph Anderson (keys/backing vocals), Antonio White (lead guitar/backing vocals), Dan Perdomo (drums), and Ryan Kellis (bass) matching her intensity, intelligence, and commitment. Because nothing happens in a vacuum – at least, nothing good does –her songs are given fresh infusions of oxygen from Moosecat Recording producer Mike Post, who helped shape the album into a cohesive, dynamic, self-contained manifesto, provocation, and keepsake.

Even as she curses herself in song, Sankaran revels in her artistic progress, kicking around tempos and genre conventions, creating carefully tailored and fittingly complex arrangements, and sharing cryptic, cathartic, compelling confessions honoring the Pinteresque push-pull of relationships between people too smart for their own good.

It’s been a long, soulful, cerebral trip for Jasmine Sankaran from her home in Moorpark, California, glued to the oldies station in her mom’s car, to the remarkable artistic breakthrough of Fortune Cookie (a title chosen as something that sounds cosmopolitan while in fact being 100% Californian). 
-Emerson Dameron