Patryk Merci
The Future of
American Music
Matriculation number:
7613841
Dr. Herzogenrath
WS 22/23
Listening Report 7
Listening Report of John Oswald’s “Plexure”
The album starts with high suspense which is achieved
through progressively increasing volume led by simple and continuously
developing sounds. The initial mixture of sounds reminds of a trapped wind and
a cigarette lighter, which could very well serve as a metaphor of what is to
come. The metaphor itself is in the lighter, as its continuous clutching
eventually produces fire, just as the initial sounds of the album eventually
produce a complex musical piece.
As the
album progresses, the anticipation is further enhanced by fast-paced, yet
muffled talk of a crowd. Eventually, the talk becomes clearer and starts
resembling the switching of different channels on a radio. There are songs
mixed with different advertisements, which make the listener feel as if they
were dragged through an imaginary tunnel of sounds, without being able to fully
commit and concentrate on one single sound. There is no clear rhythm or
organization, and the short recordings usually only offer an opportunity to
catch one single word out of the songs they represent, which makes the album
extremely chaotic and disturbing for casual listeners. Nevertheless, the
chaotic tunnel race ultimately slows down, as the album finally allows to
listen to its selected songs for a longer period of time before switching to
the next one. However, this does not make the piece any less chaotic, as the
songs which are continuously played one after another do not have anything in
common with each other, very often coming from different music genres, and
using different instruments and vocals. This phenomenon resembles a patchwork
composition which is not really as enjoyable as standard music albums, because
it completely removes the musical art from the songs, as it separates them from
their atmospheres, rhythms, and messages, preventing the listener from
experiencing the songs in their fullness.
Listening to Oswald’s “Plexure” could
be compared to a rollercoaster ride, because the emotions and experiences
change extremely fast depending on which melodies are coming up next. This
album is certainly not providing music that people enjoy in their free time, as
it appears to be more of an experiment rather than serious endeavor. Moreover,
ultimately the album gets progressively more difficult to listen to, as the
constant switching of songs becomes bothersome and even exhausting. The album
proves to be a serious challenge for the human attention span, as it forces the
listener to quickly adapt to the everchanging mix of different songs, which is
not always possible.
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