The Future of American Music

  Jon Oswald was known for his Plunderphonics music pieces, where he created new pieces from already existing music recordings of famous artists and reworked them. Artists like Michael Jackson, who was also part of the cover on Plunderphonic, The Beatles, James Brown, Bing Crosby but also classical musicians like Beethoven and Bach were part of his pieces.   The first minute and a half of his album consists of a wild mix of R&B and hip-hop songs. They are single, very short sequences, about 2-3 seconds long, which were cut together. The first song was introduced with a sound that reminded me of Michael Jackson's Thriller. From minute five to about minute seven, the use of rock & roll music was recognizable. At the end, I recognized Madonna, Nirvana and again Michael Jackson, among others. Personally, I can hardly identify with this kind of music, because listening to the album, I felt the compilation was relatively arbitrary and not balanced with each other. I recogniz...

  John Oswald is a Canadian composer, saxophonist, media artist and dancer. Special about Oswald is that he extracts fragments out of previously existing recordings to make new music.   His play “Plunderphonics” from the album “Plexture” is an example of such a recreated play from previous existing recordings. The extracted fragments are very short so that it is often impossible to recognize the fragments. I was still able to recognize some familiar parts of some songs but I am not able to label them because I do not remember the names and the fragments are so short that I am not able to reconstruct the rest of the song. Nonetheless, some parts sounded very familiar, and I am sure to have heard them somewhere before. “Plunderphonics” is very long, almost 20 minutes long. I would have preferred it if the play would have been a bit shorter because after 10 minutes it was very difficult for me to stay concentrated and focus on the fragments. The fragments are completely m...

  Author: Julia Ranft B.A. American Studies (HF), English Studies (NF) Email: s0173273@stud.uni-frankfurt.de Matrikelnummer: 7485864 The Future of (American) Music Prof. Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath Listening Report 10 John Oswald - Plexure             "Plexure" is a unique piece of experimental music created by Canadian composer and sound artist John Oswald. Released in 1993, the song is a collage of various sound samples that were collected from a wide range of sources, including popular music, radio broadcasts, spoken word recordings, and even animal sounds. Oswald's intention was to create a dense and complex tapestry of sounds that would challenge the listener's expectations and understanding of what music can be.             The song opens with a disorienting series of electronic blips and beeps, which soon give way to a jarring mashup of voices, instrume...

Plunderphonics is known for its use of digital sampling and manipulation techniques, which allow artists to create new compositions from existing recordings. This was pioneered by composer John Oswald who uses different samples to create his own songs. Similar to mashups, a technique that combines two similar songs, Oswald used sounds that did not originate in songs. This is recognizable in the first sounds of his album 69 Plunderphonics 96, in which he uses a sound that is very similar to the startup sounds of apple computers. I think he altered the sound to change its pitch and gradually changes the synchronization of the different notes within the chord. This gets replaced by a voice that could have originated from a TV show or advertisement. The song really starts with a voice screaming, “Power”, the instruments start playing and the word “Power” gets accompanied by different phrases rhythmically. The percussions lead the rhythm of this song.   A speech that could have originat...

  John Oswald’s technique of “plunderphonics” sounds to me as a layman as a form of sampling. As far as I understand from listening to his piece “69 Plunderphonics 96,” he uses pre-recorded, mainstream and widely known music which he twists into something complete new. The used sound and music sources are still recognizable in the end result. In this way the end result still sounds somewhat familiar to a new listener. He mixes music genres, changes the sources speed and sometimes even plays them backwards to record again. In a way, he really took pieces that everybody knows and makes them strange but always still recognizable kind of like I would imaging an auditory collage out of sounds. Maybe because of the familiar parts, this avantgarde piece is rather easy to listen to in comparison to others we have got to know in this course. I can actually see myself listen parts of this while being in the car or doing laundry. However, I am still not sure what or if there is bigger meaning...

  Prof. Dr. Herzogenrath The Future of Avantgarde-Music Blaha, Malte C. Matrikelnummer 7509502   Listening report – John Oswald I would describe John Oswald’s music as a radical sonic exploration that defies conventional Mash-Up-Music. Listening to the complete Album of Oswald, it is safe to state that he challenges the very foundations of music. He kind of bends the boundaries of sound and rhythm to create a wholly unique sonic experience. It sounds like a fearless approach and experimentation of what music and Avantgarde Music can be. It is a mixture of a-rhythmical sounds that tend to make sense when put together. Then, Oswald interrupts the melody and the Mash-Up with something completely different. The result can vary in the sense of musical recognition. While one person might hear the vibrant sounds of singing women, the other person might hear the outstanding cut rhythms that have a similar characterization than early Rock music. At the heart of Oswald’s mus...

  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...

  Melanie Diehl (6887890) Prof. Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath Winter Semester 2022/2023 The Future of American Music Listening Reports - 22.02.2023 John Oswald – Plexure Sounds like straight out of a Sci-fi movie until, that Avantgarde style drop hits, it suddenly shifts and feels like a mashup of Hip-Hop music, but also like when in a movie someone is being hacked and the computer is crashing. Like it’s an upbeat music, or like when you’re driving and changing the radio channels to find a song you want to listen to while driving. Suddenly, it’s like Whitney Houston is singing, when suddenly you are still undecisive to what you want to listen to, and I reckon this goes on for 19 minutes. However, suddenly changes again, and I’m sort of loving it, and hoping for a more rock or metal shift, and suddenly you hear a cry out loud.             This! Ladies, and gentlemen, is what I consider Avantgarde music in my head. I feel ...

  Well, that was a wild ride. Random snippets of old songs put together in a random order. And these snippets are very short and often have no coherence whatsoever. They just don’t fit together most of the time. It goes from a silent, soothing sound to a really loud one and back. Once you have adjusted to one sound and mood, the next one (which is completely different) gets thrown at you. The whole piece is just one big jumble, a big mess. I really don’t know what to make of it. Some of the snippets seem familiar, some of the songs I can even recognize (though I probably wouldn’t be able to name the song or artist). But the sheer arbitrariness with which these sequences have been thrown together just doesn’t make sense to me. It is an up and down. Some parts are okay to listen to, others are just sheer chaos and not enjoyable at all. In the whole, I don’t see the point of this. Why would someone go through all that trouble of gathering all these excerpts and throwing them toget...

  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 adver...

  Reem Zedan 7711552 Prof. Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath The Future of [American] Music 02 February 2022   John Oswald ’s Plexure This is what I imagine the expression “your life flashes before your eyes” sounds like. It is a mixture of everything and nothing. I struggle to find any rhythmic sounds or patterns and maybe that is what makes it special but to be honest.. This gave me a headache and to be even more specific it is giving me a headache as I am typing this. I am trying to tune into the artistic aspect of the music but it is quite difficult because of the constant change in musical genres and direction. One second could be hip hop and the next could be country. I definitely never heard anything like this before. Although I do not particularly enjoy listening to this, I am amazed by the imagery it constructs in the listeners brain. It made me think of someone, who is constantly changing the radio channel and is not able to decide what he/she wants to listen to, ...

  John Oswald's album Plunderphonic - Plexure is about 20 minutes of experimental music that starts out like the intertwined sounds of radio stations by taking similar parts from many musicians' pre-existing recordings but then uses the harmonies of these similar parts to create a sound that is only possible through the power of sampling and manipulation. Until the end of the first minute of the track, I found myself wanting to choose one station from the imaginary radio in front of me, I deeply felt the uneasiness of not being able to choose a station during that minute of constantly changing and overlapping human voices. It absolutely requires embracing the unexpected and creative experimentation with sound. At the beginning of the next part, I was able to catch the tones that made me a little more relaxed, in harmony with the melodies I recognized, with less human voices and drums overlapping. Therefore, the challenge of listening to the music relatively decreased once I fou...

 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 Oswald´s “Plexure” is a remarkably unique piece of music that plays with traditional ideas of structure and musical composition. The album and its songs consist of a collage of various sound recordings, which Oswald has manipulated and recontextualized to create a dense, yet multifaceted soundscape. One of the most striking aspects of “Plexure” is the sheer amount of different samples Oswald incorporates into the album. Throughout its roughly 25-minute runtime, one can hear snippets ranging from jazz and classical music, all the way to news broadcasts or television advertisements. These conflicting elements are woven together by Oswald in order to create a musical performance that is in equal parts surprising and jarring. Oswald's approach to sound collage is both playful and sophisticated. He has a keen sense for unusual connections and interplay between different sounds. For example, he might take a snippet of a classical piano piece and splice it together with a burst...

  Jon Oswald was known for his Plunderphonics music pieces, where he created new pieces from already existing music recordings of famous artists and reworked them. Artists like Michael Jackson, who was also part of the cover on Plunderphonic, The Beatles, James Brown, Bing Crosby but also classical musicians like Beethoven and Bach were part of his pieces.   The first minute and a half of his album consists of a wild mix of R&B and hip-hop songs. They are single, very short sequences, about 2-3 seconds long, which were cut together. The first song was introduced with a sound that reminded me of Michael Jackson's Thriller. From minute five to about minute seven, the use of rock & roll music was recognizable. At the end, I recognized Madonna, Nirvana and again Michael Jackson, among others. Personally, I can hardly identify with this kind of music, because listening to the album, I felt the compilation was relatively arbitrary and not balanced with each other. I recogniz...

  As much as I despise the Plexure album because it is truly exhausting to listen to, John Oswald created the epitome of multitasking. I think this piece harbors a certain amount of arrogance toward society. Oswald just took everything and put it together. I don't think it was his intention to provoke anyone with it. He is probably well aware that not everyone can be reached with every type of music – especially when it is all mixed together. He claims it is a musical quote – a reminder that the world is full of plagiarizing, but I think it’s not an homage to anything. It just exists in its own little entity. I obviously don’t know if Oswald thought that he had created the greatest piece of music to ever exist – I certainly don’t think so. And as I have already mentioned, I physically cannot listen to it. But it shows how messy something can be.   I personally think it sounds like someone is skipping through their playlist – I don’t know – maybe the passenger in a car (aka...

  John Oswald’s compositions from his album “Plexure“ is a new interpretation of music. John Oswald is well-known for his sonic daring experiments in music. Oswald aimed to explore and analyze the depths of the future in his compositions, which he realized in the form of “Plunderphonics“. “Plunderphonics is a music genre in which tracks are constructed by sampling recognizable musical work. Plunderphonics can be considered a form of sound challenge. Oswald has described it as a referential and self-conscious practice that interrogates notions of originality and identity.“ [1] Overall, Oswald   pursued the aim of making entirely new music, which is all about making it new and unheard. Still, the music should be recognized by the listener. The idea is how short a sample can be so that still everybody recognizes it. This idea is illustrated by Oswald’s compositions in which he takes e.g. quote samples, takes them apart, and shatters them, so the whole function of the quote is ...

  John Oswald was one of the major exponents of the “Appropriation art”, whose purpose was to make art profitable for everyone, so that everybody could produce and take advantage of artistic creations to assemble new productions. This kind of new art was highly defended by Oswald, who thought that art should have been available for everybody for artistic purposes and that’s exactly what he did when he released his most ambitious composition Pleasure in 1993. This piece was put together through the cut-up method, that consist of montaging songs in a certain order. Pleasure is a 20-minute collage of songs, characterized by a bewildering complexity. This piece is extremely complex and fast: I felt like I had agreed to go on a journey through time and I’d gone inside a time machine that goes incredibly fast. This time machine quickly transports me into a space-time tunnel filled with songs from a decade, which I know but can hardly recognize: it feels like taking a full musical tr...

  John Oswald's "Plexure" is an avant-garde piece of music that blends various sound samples to create an intriguing atmosphere that challenges the listener's perception of reality. The piece incorporates a diverse range of sounds, including static, fragmented melodies, spoken word, and white noise. The overall effect is that of a distorted reality, a place where everything is slightly askew and unusual. Upon listening to "Plexure," I was immediately struck by the disorienting nature of the piece. The sound samples are arranged in a seemingly random fashion, which contributes to the sense of unease that permeates the music. The lack of a discernible melody or beat further adds to this feeling, leaving the listener without a familiar anchor to cling to. Instead, the piece invites the listener to embrace the chaos and explore the strange new world that Oswald has created. One of the most interesting aspects of "Plexure" is the way in which it in...

The first ten seconds of “Dab” feel like the start of a typical percussion-heavy song. I think a lot of 80s pop music songs start that way. But this is not done by percussions, of course. It just reminds me of those. Phil Collins/Genesis comes to mind. Then the anticipation is squashed because the next ten or so seconds reminds me forcefully of the “It's Gonna Rain” track done by Steve Reich. At least on the first hearing. On the second hearing I realised that it is not “rain” but “bad”. It feels as if a coal-powered train is on the move. It gives that sound and vibe at the beginning, the first 30 seconds or so. And only then I realise that it is Michael Jackson's “Bad”. The sequences when there is not the Michael Jackson song playing feel like the medium (disc or cassette) is broken, and as if the music is on a broken loop. Also, the volume is turning down slowly, then the piece takes up both  pace and volume, and there he is, Michael is back in action. This is my impression o...