KORENA PANG
An enigmatic alter ego for Jeff Mangum, Korena Pang is thanked along with the Turtle Town Orchestra on On Avery Island.

Jeff has performed solo shows under this name in the past, playing Neutral Milk Hotel songs.

Additionally, Korena Pang guested on an album from Guignol called Angela, David and the Great Neopolitan Road Issue. Guignol is a project comprised of Jeremy Barnes, Laurence Coleman, and Aaron Moore. Recorded in Saumur, France during the summer of 2001 and refined in Leicester, UK over the following two years, the Guignol album finally saw release in October 2003. Also appearing on the album is Nick Mott (of Volcano the Bear).

In Jeff's interview with Pitchfork in February 2002, he said the following when asked about his sound collage projects:

"I made a record of montage sounds in '99 under the name Korena Pang, but it was never put out because it didn't do it for me. It was mostly taking all the four-track recordings I'd done throughout the 90s and collaging them, but it turned into a mishmash that I wasn't totally in love with. That record was more just a collection of twenty different home recordings, whereas the montage work I'm doing now is like a thousand sounds in one minute. Now I'm able to go out into the world with my field recorder, record sounds, and bring them home to collage on the computer. The raw sounds can really move and come alive that way. I love the idea of a record containing an entire universe; where the sounds span decades of recording from all over the world and all sorts of different sources."

Another quote from Jeff mentioning Korena Pang can be found in his "farewell" message to the old NMH message board: "i dont give a fuck if it 'tops aeroplane' or not. thats just another mental prison. anyone waiting for an album to top the last one should look somewhere else, because you'll inevitably be disappointed. (...) creating just one minute of something inspiring is an incredibly fun thing to do. so next time you hear that neutral milk is recording, dont get your hopes up. it may only be one minute of music. and if i ever release my korena pang peices for you to hear, you'll soon find that its just liberated dada to free the mind. if you want more neutral milk, dont buy it. you'll hate it."

An official release from Korena Pang (somewhat) finally happened in 2006, with "excerpt from Dogbirthed Brother in Eggsack Delicious" appearing on the compilation AUX: Experimental Sound from Athens, GA. It's a slightly different mix of a track that was played by Jeff on his WFMU radio show under the title "To Animate The Body With The Cocoon of the Her Unconscious Christ The Mother Removes Her Death Body of 1910 Only To Be Reborn In The Same Spirit as a School of Blow Fish Believing in the Coming of the Milk Christ" by The Long Warm Wall of Alfred Snouts. So are Korena Pang and (The Long Warm Wall of) Alfred Snouts the same "person"?

Korena Pang is also an artist. At an Athens art show held at Clayton Street Gallery in August 1999, Korena Pang and Beth Sale's collaboration on a circus-poster-collaged painting titled "Nine Hundred Ninety Nine Million Black Holes to Pop Into" was described as "charmingly and cheerfully funkadelic."

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