John Oswald’s “Plexure” was published in 1993 and contains a mixture of audio snippets of famous songs.
The composition starts with a sound that
can be seen as a resemblance of an explosion, followed by silence and a slow
increase of sounds entering the composition. This process reminded me as a
listener of the Big Bang, caused by a sudden explosion and the slow creation of
life. At the beginning, it is hard to distinguish whether the composer used
snippets of one song or snippets of several song. However, it is clearly
noticeable that the sounds are played in reverse, which can be associated to
time travel with the listener traveling through various eras of music. However,
due to the random, achronological placement of genres throughout the
composition, the listener can also perceive the composition as a compilation of
music of the present.
Shortly after, a lot of snippets from the
Hip-Hop genre were used. The length of the snippets vary, making it difficult
for the listener to concentrate on each snippet. The difficulty to focus on one
snippet, the lack of rhythm, the randomized repetition of some snippets, and
the sudden changes to different genres throughout the composition caused me as
a listener to perceive the composition as very chaotic. Consequently, the
composition could be seen as a parody of the songs or genres used, which is
reinforced by a heavy contrast of genre at many changes of snippets.
There is also an attempt to create some
sort of rhythm by repeating sentences, utterances, or very short snippets of
sounds. However, this attempt is not being followed until the end of the
composition.
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