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John Oswald – Plexure (Full Album)

 

Jon Oswald was known for his Plunderphonics music pieces, where he created new pieces from already existing music recordings of famous artists and reworked them. Artists like Michael Jackson, who was also part of the cover on Plunderphonic, The Beatles, James Brown, Bing Crosby but also classical musicians like Beethoven and Bach were part of his pieces.  The first minute and a half of his album consists of a wild mix of R&B and hip-hop songs. They are single, very short sequences, about 2-3 seconds long, which were cut together. The first song was introduced with a sound that reminded me of Michael Jackson's Thriller. From minute five to about minute seven, the use of rock & roll music was recognizable. At the end, I recognized Madonna, Nirvana and again Michael Jackson, among others. Personally, I can hardly identify with this kind of music, because listening to the album, I felt the compilation was relatively arbitrary and not balanced with each other. I recognized many performers and songs, but this constant change of beats, musical styles and different sounds in general is much too choppy for me personally and just seems chaotic. Listening to his album Plexure, I found it hard to tell when there was a transition from one song to another. But maybe that's exactly why he's considered a pioneer of music genres like bastard pop and mash-up, while representing a new kind of music genre and a curious, active idea of listening to music.

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