John Oswald: Plunderphonics and the Question of Authorship

In the frame of avantgarde music’s approach to appropriation art, which can take the form of mash-up music or other forms of citational music montages, the composer John Oswald prominently coined the term “Plunderphonics” through his music and, finally, in his essay "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative” (1985). This musical version of collage techniques followed larger artistic trends of referential practices, like Duchamp’s and Warhol’s appropriation art, although in “Plunderphonics” the sampled material provides the sole basis for the sound used.  

In his essay, Oswald poses the crucial question of originality by asking: “Is a musical property properly private, and if so, when and how does one trespass upon it?” and goes on to ponder on this notion of authorship of particular chords, chants, and sounding materials. Rightfully so, Oswald explores these ideas of sonic manifestations, as with the introduction of mechanical sound recordings tools, synthesizers, and sequencers, music became much more reproduceable and the function of art shifted from its ritualistic character to a more political dimension, as Walter Benjamin famously argued. His record “Plexure” then, pushes the boundaries of music culture, capturing a point of time, when it was made, whilst also providing a critique on the debate of authorship and its monetarization by record companies.

The piece starts with a spaceship like sound of taking off, followed immediately by a 17-minute sonic experiment of chopped, screwed, and recontextualized music. What I found interesting upon listening, is that although the composition is like a sonic rapid-fire patchwork: it does not let you rest in between snippets at all. The recognizability of the sonic quotes will pull you into the track repeatedly and drag you along with every new sonic entity. One feels like one can almost grasp it, name one of the sampled materials, but most of the time, they are already gone again or too alienized from the original version to be recognized on first try. While this listening experience can certainly be pretty frustrating, with one’s need to contextualize a piece of art, a sonic track, and make sense of it, I definitely felt like as soon as one lets loose of the usual sonic expectation, the plunderphonic ride becomes enjoyable. The key here is, I would argue, to not really hear the track upon listening to it. Although on a subliminal level, one might recognize a few sampled songs, the track is devoid of any traditional dynamics, listeners are attuned to.

Further interesting points about the piece would be, first, the track’s interrelatedness of tempo and genre. I perceived the song to progress through the material according to the tempo of each snippet – with slowing tempo alongside ballad-like music and increasing tempo next to songs more on the rock or metal side. Second, the track has an ageless character to it, precisely by combining thousands of familiar fragments of popular music in one long track, which creates a trip through time and space of 10 years of pop music history. By manipulating these sounds and recontextualizing them in a big composition, they become alien, inexplicable in regular musical terms, and, thus, acquire a timeless character within this big blur.

Altogether, I found Oswald’s style bedazzling, but also intriguing. Though one is more used to sample techniques in contemporary music now, it was still in its early stages of development when Oswald coined plunderphonics. With it, he has contributed to the discussion of originality and identity and has ultimately expanded the nature of ownership through his provocative pieces.