John Oswald - Plexure: Longest album snippet ever (but it's an album)

 

John Oswald confused my sense for music with this. Can there be too much music in music for it to be music? Even when listening to the first minute of this piece of music, I questioned myself how many pieces of music are merged into this – it’s not a piece anymore – chunk of music. The whole 19 minutes I tried to recognize the single songs included and felt a rush of happiness whenever I did. Nevertheless, the adventure through Oswald’s “album” kept me stressed and busy the whole time. I was not sure whether this sounded like skipping through an album or skipping through the car radio with a bad signal so the songs change in speed in the time.

It started with an exposition that raised high expectations for what was to come. The first 30 seconds felt like something really huge was approaching me, but it turned into something I would describe as “a cursed radio”. From nightmarish sounds to hip-hop in just a few seconds, this track got me sitting there with my eyes wide open and trying to grasp what just happened. I had to refuse to repeat that part, so I could have the first experience as a whole. I felt relieved when Oswald decided to go a bit slower; even though these parts only lasted for a few seconds. Most of the time, the songs he included only had one or two seconds in Oswald’s composition of snippets.

I really liked the highlights that my brain could figure out for myself. Around 11:00, I heard the guitar riff of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana and short afterwards “Smooth Criminal” by Michael Jackson. These two songs struck me like a lightning because a feeling that I would describe as “Oh yes, I really like these. Thanks for reminding me” came up. I thought that anyone listening to this probably had some moments like this and maybe it was Oswald’s intention to show how far music has come and what we forgot about the music that coined our taste.

It is not easy to summarize this experience due to it being so long and packed with way too many songs. The parts that I found remarkable were of course the beginning and the ending, but also the 90s middle part I mentioned in the previous paragraph. The ending – especially the last 20 seconds – felt like dying and fast-forwarding through one’s memories. I think that something that reminded me of death is a very fitting ending since nothing can be a better ending than such an absolute one. It felt quite unpleasant still because it was so sudden and the music kept speeding up without reaching some sort of peak.