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John Oswald report. Anna Trubnikova

One very amusing thing I came up with while analyzing John Oswald’s pieces is it seems that he’s trying to communicate a very important idea through his music: that all the new things, in various fields of art are never new but borrowed instead, the good old and forgotten ones. On top of that – yet another interesting feature – he wants to tell us it is good, it is okay to borrow someone else’s things and try to express your art through them, as well as honour the other musician.

It is fascinating how for example his piece Plexure makes you think of so many things at the same time while listening to it as it has so many different pieced combined together in one unit, that it makes you wonder of all the years and talents of musical history, of various rhymes, beats, melodies, sounds, patterns. And the effect it causes: your brain starts trying to focus on one thing at a time, tries to separate one from another, to figure out the melody but it can’t every time and this feels like a race, but one that is peaceful and slow, as weird as it may sound, because the melody affects you that way. You don’t become restless as expected with such a pattern, on the contrary – you get together with the flow.

The concept of copying just one sound timbre which is not forbidden in terms of copyright – or at least it seems as it is not. It is quite difficult to figure out what and also important how many pieces he combines in Plexure unlike for example Dab. Controversial piece consisting of solely work of other composers then becomes a unique masterpiece once you listen to it after hesitating for a while whether it does or does not have anything authentic to it or is just designed to mock artists.

It is just more obvious in case of Oswald – and he’s got to be given more credit for this, namely for his bravery – that he just openly declares what he does and spreads the influential art of recreating. The stress is on the moment of recognition – when you’re just about to find out what you’re listening to and at this very moment it is already too late because there comes another piece. It would also be interesting to find out how this kind of music affects our cognitive process, as if we talk just by the feeling – it could turn out very unexpected. 
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