Skip to main content

Listening Report: John Oswald – Plexure

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.

By using snippets of different genres that are getting shorter to the point where the snippets only consist of small sounds, the density of snippets increase towards the end of the composition. By looking at the beginning of the composition as the beginning of life with the Big Bang, the end of the composition can be seen as an approach towards a Big Bang which causes life to get denser until it reaches singularity.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Listening Report on John Oswald: Plexure

 Sarah Kumar Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath The Future of (American) Music 06 Mar. 2023 Listening Report on John Oswald: Plexure According to John Oswald, “[a] plunderphone is a recognizable sonic quote, using the actual sound of something familiar which has already been recorded” (Lecture Slides 18). However, only if the source stays recognizable can it be called plunderphonics. In his album Plexure , several songs are played back and mixed together, thus creating a new sound. This is interesting because while the excerpts of songs that are used are recognizable or at least sound familiar to some degree, played backwards and mashed up as they are in Plexure , they create a new sound. Like on the cover of the album, on which a collage making up a man can be seen, the mixing of different songs played backwards gives a new feeling to something known. The way the songs are mixed makes them unintelligible. The meaning of the words of the original recordings are not able to be compr...

John Cage – Inlets

  This does not sound like music to me. Depending on the interpretation of different players or performers, this piece will always sound different. In this case, it sounds to me like someone is walking through a cave with water at the bottom, dragging their feet through it. Sometimes it sounds like water in a toilet bowl, especially when we hear the water in a bigger shell being swished around. These sounds are relaxing in the background, it is like a gentle stream of water. I just wonder what went through the head of the composer while writing this piece. But I guess he had some experimental ideas that are interesting to try out. Those shells are quite pretty, I have never seen such big ones that are not broken. I was surprised when something else happened towards the end of the piece. That tone which came out of the one shell was so clear, it sounded like a trumpet. I didn’t know that shells can sound like that. It was quite beautiful. It was a nice way to end the piece. I di...

William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops III

  The Disintegration Loops is a quartet of albums published in 2002 and 2003 by American avant-garde composer William Basinski. The pieces are made up of tape loop recordings that were played over time, with noise and crackles rising as the tape deteriorated. Basinski noticed this effect when attempting to convert his older recordings to digital format. The completion of the recordings coincided with the September 11, 2001 events, which Basinski witnessed and adds a deeper meaning to the composition. The composition is fascinating in many ways and makes the listener lose track of time. The tape loop recording had a very calming effect on me and put me in a trance-like state when I listened to it in its entirety. The tape loop is really soothing, so much so that I didn't even notice the loss of quality when I first listened to it. It makes you forget about time and allows you to really get into the piece capturing the calmness it exudes. You forget or don't really notice how i...