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John Oswald - Listening Report

 

John Oswald is a Canadian composer, saxophonist, media artist and dancer. Special about Oswald is that he extracts fragments out of previously existing recordings to make new music. 

His play “Plunderphonics” from the album “Plexture” is an example of such a recreated play from previous existing recordings.

The extracted fragments are very short so that it is often impossible to recognize the fragments. I was still able to recognize some familiar parts of some songs but I am not able to label them because I do not remember the names and the fragments are so short that I am not able to reconstruct the rest of the song. Nonetheless, some parts sounded very familiar, and I am sure to have heard them somewhere before.

“Plunderphonics” is very long, almost 20 minutes long. I would have preferred it if the play would have been a bit shorter because after 10 minutes it was very difficult for me to stay concentrated and focus on the fragments.

The fragments are completely mixed, and it seems like Oswald mixed all kinds of genres to create “Plunderphonics”. Soft and slow sounds are followed by harsh and loud sounds. This results in making the play very inconsistent and impulsive.

Furthermore, this creates some kind of unpredictability. For me, it was impossible to predict what kind of sounds and fragments are about to follow because of the inconsistency and impulsivity of the play. In some regards, this makes the play interesting and exciting, but I think I would have preferred it if the play was more harmonious. This could have been created by adding together sounds that sound more similar.

 

The beginning of “Plunderphonics” starts by a sequence that sounds like all kinds of sounds are mixed into a distorted sequence that makes it impossible to recognize specific sounds. For me, it sounded similar to a completely crowded room full of people talking. “Plunderphonics” ended with the same kind of sequence. This creates some kind of unity in this very impulsive and unpredictable play because the beginning and ending of the play are very similar. This similarity is actually the only similarity in this whole play.

 

Even though this kind of music is not my preferred kind of music, I have to say that this idea of Oswald to mix different fragments of music is a very interesting idea and approach to creating new music.

 

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