John Oswald need a new Radio

The 1980s are considered to be one of the greatest decades in musical history. There was such a huge variety in music and top-tier talent which are now regarded as musical legends, that music critics and experts would almost call unfair in comparison to other decades. It is difficult to attribute the 80s success to anyone artists or group but names like Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna among a tremendous number of artists emerge as frontrunners of artists who shaped the decade. The number of legendary performances and artists grows even larger taking the early 90s into account too. It seems almost overwhelming trying to create a playlist of the decade’s greatest hits yet alone one that is not too long to take forever to listen through. 

John Oswald created an experience that lets listeners ponder at the sounds of the 80s and 90s through the music genre which he coined “Plunderphonics”. In Plunderphonics songs are sampled and arranged in a way that creates a completely new experience to recognisable works from across the majority of common genres. In a time when streaming services were but visions of the future if anything, compilations were not as common and accessible as they are to us nowadays. Oswald’s “Plexure” from 1993 captures the musical spirit of a whole generation of music in an uncanny yet intriguing way. As mentioned above a variety of songs is sampled and arranged in one track: Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2U”, Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams”, U2’s “With or without you”, Nirvana’s “Smells like teen spirit”, and many more classic pop, rock, and even metal songs from the decade can be heard briefly during Plexure’s 19min runtime. Sometimes there are highly recognisable elements of such songs combined with other parts of different songs, looped, chopped, and rearranged. 

Altogether, with “Plexure” John Oswald created an enjoyable musical experience, especially for people who enjoy the 80s and early 90s music in its variety of genres. While listening to the album for the first time I could not help but think of Oswald switching the radio station every couple of seconds which to me was an amusing thought. During the second listen through I could understand the highly skilful crafting he is undertaking with his project and the implications the work might have had to genres like Hip-Hop, which nowadays is one of the biggest music genres in the (western) world and which frequently features samples to songs. Although I felt like Oswald intentionally teased my ears to the wonderful sounds of the 80s sometimes, I also felt nostalgic even though I did not live to experience the 80s and early 90s in person only admiring the time through countless replays of its songs and compilations that make me want to explore more about the music.