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Listening Report of John Oswald’s “Plexure”

 

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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