Listening Report 9 John Oswald Plunderphonic Plexure

 

Maria Alighourchi

7489718

The Future of American Music

 

Listening Report 9

John Oswald

Plunderphonic Plexure

 

John Oswald’s Album “Plunderphonic Plexure” is a mixture, or even a sort of a mixtape of many different artists, mostly pop and hip/hop. To me, this sort of music composing is utterly new but in the same way fascinating. Oswald deliberately redefined the meaning of composing music. He took it literally and actually composed music that already existed in his own unique way.

First and foremost, the title should be taken into account. “Plunderphonic” already presents us a hint to what we are about to listen to – a composed pile of phonetic plunder. Even though, plunder is generally associated with something that is left over or useless parts, Oswald changes this definition too by exhibiting the usefulness of this sort of “musical plunder”. Astonishingly, the snippets of the several songs, composed and changed, clustered together, does sound like completely new music.

The album is, like most albums parted into several different songs. Surprisingly, every song on this album does sounds different, conveys different atmospheres and feelings. At first, I was unsure to clearly identify when a song ends and another begins but the cut is easily hearable since the next composition always fairly differs from the last.

The first song is quite chaotic, and creates an anxiety driven atmosphere since a lot of loud voices, more rap than flowing melody, are mixed. It starts with the sound of rewinding tape which is an antithesis in itself – as if starting the whole album anew, already listened to. In a sense, we already did listen to the album if one recognizes the pieces of the original artists. Very clever. Moreover, the different snippets of tape also differ in speed, some are played very quickly and some in almost slow motion, as well as normal speed. With the overlap of all these multiple spaces of sound, words, tunes I got the feeling of standing in a very crowded, claustrophobic room. It also reminded me of the scenario to turn and skip through radio channels, searching for your favorite one. However, I do recognize that the chosen tapes fit very well with each other, being from the rap gerne and containing almost only male voices. Thus, it clearly can be categorized into the rap gerne (not sure if it has to be put into the box of gerne, but still).

Contrastingly, the second song on the album is quite slow (at least in the beginning) and carries a more harmonic feeling with it. This lays in the usage of comforting instruments and melodies, as well as women’s ballade voices. The mixed tapes are longer snippets and do not interfere with each other as much as in the first song, but flow almost perfectly into each other like waves clashing on the beach. In the middle and end part of the second composition, the tapes do overlap, change in speed, and contain squeaking sounds. Nevertheless, it never loses the calming atmosphere until the end, keeping the feeling of one coherent song (which it is, literally taken). Concludingly, I find it fascinating, how Oswald manages to pick certain artists, who are completely different but the voice or melody have a connecting factor, and puzzle them together, like mosaic, never really melted but functioning and fitting, complementing each other.