John Oswald - Plunderphonic & Discosphere

If you've been following this site you probably know that I hold John Oswald in high esteem. His works in the field of sampling, which he calls plunderphonics, is astounding, fascinating and deeply educational. Oswald isn't one to merely sample a portion of a song and loop it like a stereotypical hip-hop recording (or most of Sean "Diddy" Combs' catalog, although that's another story), instead Oswald distorts, compounds and chops recordings into bits, sometimes rendering them unrecognizable. His work isn't for everyone and much of it would probably be labeled noise by those who don't appreciate the avant garde, but for those with an appreciation for the different or bizarre, Oswald's works are considered genius, and I strongly agree with that belief.

Back in July of 2009 I wrote a rather detailed account of the non-release of Oswald's best known work, both for the quality of it's content and it's infamy, the Plunderphonic CD. The CD was a collection of Oswald's reinterpretations of a wide range of music, everything from the world of American pop to classical, all chopped and edited into stunning reworkings. Plunderphonic was never meant for sale, Oswald pressed up the CDs and sent them to friends, artists, libraries and other parties with the intent of sharing his work and not making any profit whatsoever. While this would be most likely be considered acceptable in the US, Oswald lives in Canada and the CRIA sued him only to have the master tapes and all remaining copies of the CD destroyed. I'm not going to rehash all the details here, especially since the July 2009 article can be read here and goes into further detail, but the Plunderphonic CDs non-availability has made it quite the fascinating piece since and a major collector's item for anyone lucky enough to own an original copy. Most of the material from it has been reissued over time, albeit in slightly altered forms and without the original liner notes, and low-quality rips circulate frequently, but despite the net being the wonderful resource it is I don't believe anyone was openly trading any high quality copies of the album. I'm going to change that today.

Earlier this year, while on another forum where people were discussing their rare finds, someone mentioned having found an original Plunderphonic CD in a used bin for around five dollars. I politely asked that fellow if he might be able to rip it for me and he was kind enough to do it. He sent me the album as a single lossless file with a pdf containing scans of the packaging and liner notes, to which I split the file into multiple tracks with Medieval Cue Splitter, cleaned and edited that cue sheet and am presenting it to you for download as both FLACs and V0 MP3s. Unfortunately, I don't have the individual who provided me with the original files screen name so, if you're reading this, my apologies but feel free to drop me a line and I'll give you the credit you deserve.

I'm also posting another rare Oswald release, Discosphere, in FLAC and V0 MP3 formats for your listening enjoyment. Apart from altering the file tags there was nothing changed about these files and they were received from a private site that will remain nameless, although I would like to give a thank you to the individual responsible for sharing it. Discosphere, unlike Plunderphonic, is a collection of Oswald's works for performances and installations, and while it has similarities in style and production to that of Plunderphonic, it should not be considered more of the same.

Oswald is still at it, making intense art and pissing people off, and the world is all the better for it. He recently reissued his Plexure CD as prePlexure, a vinyl only release containing a new take on the original work named prePlex, and the original piece renamed PlexureConcentrate. Of course, my whole not having a job thing which translates to not having money makes it difficult to purchase such an item, but judging by the excerpt from a rough version of prePlex that Oswald has available to listen to on his site I'm sure the finished product will be stunning. That rough excerpt of prePlex can be found here, although who knows how truly rough it is compared to the finished version, and more information about purchasing the vinyl and Oswald in general can be found at his FONY label site. You can also purchase the Plunderphonics 69/96 compilation via iTunes and it is well worth the price. Much of the Plunderphonic CD and excerpts from Discosphere, Plexure and other Oswald projects are featured in the compilation, but those versions have been remastered, reedited and in general have differences from the original releases. I may eventually post a lossless rip of the 69/96 comp, if only because the second CD is nearly unplayable in most setups due to it's bizarre formatting. That's a story in and of itself, one I'm not going to get into right now. Honestly though, as great as that comp is to listen to, the listener really benefits from the exhaustively detailed interview and liner notes included with the physical packaging, none of which are included with the digital release. Maybe Negativland can help people out with that. You can also download some of Oswald's Mystery Tapes at the wonderful UbuWeb.

One more thing, please take note that you must download both rar files for the FLAC versions of Plunderphonic and Discosphere, though they won't expand together. The files aren't linked to each other so don't delete the rars until you've extracted all the files from all parts. Enjoy!


John Oswald - Plunderphonic

FLAC Part 1

FLAC Part 2

V0 MP3

01 beatles
02 dab
03 way
04 replica
05 white
06 dont
07 pretender
08 black
09 brown
10 fabulous
11
12 prelude
13 net
14 birth
15 pocket
16 mirror
17 mist
18 ten4
19 tune
20 spring
21 7th
22
23 aria
24 rainbow
25


John Oswald - Discosphere

FLAC Part 1

FLAC Part 2

V0 MP3

01 Skindling Shades
02 Amina
03 Bell Speeds
04 Field
05 Nothing
06 Short Attack
07 Angle
08 Melody
09 Shane
10 Prey
11 Touch
12 Love1
13 Fence
14 VT
15 Beat
16 Code
17 The Case Of Death

John Oswald - Plunderphonic

In 2004, everyone was losing their minds over Danger Mouse's Grey Album. For the uninitiated, the Grey Album was a mash-up of the music from the Beatles' White Album and the vocals from Jay-Z's Black Album. The Grey Album was creative and rather well-done, but it got most of it's press because of the stern reaction from EMI and the Beatles' lawyers and their claims of copyright infringement. In retrospect, a lot of humor has come of these events in great part due to Paul McCartney's limited-release remix album as Twin Freaks and a Beatles-sanctioned remix album, Love. All this has happened while the Beatles' catalogue remains nearly impossible to sample if you don't pay exorbitant fees, and even then it may not be possible. As for Danger Mouse, real name Brian Burton, his career skyrocketed due to the fame granted because of the Grey Album, but despite doing production work for EMI related artists he still seems to suffer their lawyers' unexplainable wraths as evidenced with the non-release of the music portion of his collaboration with Sparklehorse, David Lynch and a who's-who cast of rock all-stars, Dark Night Of The Soul, of which no reason was ever made public for it's non-availability. All of this said though, Danger Mouse still sampled the Beatles without their permission and, contrary to popular belief, did attempt to sell copies of the Grey Album through his website. Copyright law may be rather draconian and difficult to maneuver around here in the US, but it is the law and if the copyright owner wants to fight for their properties and has the funds to fuel such a legal battle, such as the Beatles or EMI, you'd better be prepared for the worst.

Fifteen years before the Grey Album debacle, John Oswald, a musician and composer from Canada, produced what many consider his magnum-opus, an album named Plunderphonic. What happened to Oswald's album has many striking similarities to the events surrounding the Grey Album. In fact, by today's standards, his story would hit home harder than Danger Mouse's tale ever could have. In 1989, Oswald, after years of creating sample-based recordings, assembled his Plunderphonic album and, out of his own funds, had copies of the album mastered and mass-produced on compact disc. He proceeded to mail the copies to libraries, publications, artists and friends among others at no cost to them. In fact, he refused to charge anything for the album as he did not own the copyright for any of the tracks or artwork he sampled, but was still attacked by the CRIA, the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA, for copyright infringement. Their claim was that despite Oswald not making any profit from his album's release, he was still infringing on the copyright of the sampled authors and the remaining undistributed copies had to be destroyed. Of course, here in the US, people could have complained about his use of their works without their permission, but as there was no profit made or copyright requested for Oswald's work, the physical copies would most-likely remained in existence. Much has been said that the fight to destroy the Plunderphonic album may have been caused by CBS/Sony as they were angry about the sampling of Michael Jackson both on the album as well as the artwork. The artwork, in fact, is probably the origin of their distaste, as it features Jackson's head pasted to the body of a nude French model. It's pretty damn amusing to me, but I'm sure it wasn't for CBS.

Apart from their legal complications, comparing Danger Mouse and John Oswald's work is like comparing a house-cat to an African lion. The Grey Album was catchy and featured the then-popular vocals from Jay-Z's Black Album as well as classic Beatles tracks, whereas Plunderphonic was comprised of tracks from multiple artists, in multiple styles, none of which were particularly commercial sounding. Plunderphonic could be called rough, disjointed or even a test of one's patience, whereas the Grey Album met somewhere between pop and hip-hop. Most likely, if it were released today, Oswald's Plunderphonic would gain little public support, if any, for it's release or distribution and it would be treated as an artsy project only for those who liked noise and calamity. This is an unfair perspective of course, but you can't convince the majority to listen to abstract assemblies of music next to Top 40 radio favorites.

John Oswald continues to work today on various projects using his Plunderphonic sound concepts as the base. You'd do well to visit his excellent website as well as the one he's dedicated specifically to plunderphonics and projects of the sort. Much more information about the non-release of the Plunderphonic album can be found there as well as a link to download the album itself in MP3 format, but that link has been known to go offline from time to time so I'm posting it here as well. If you've got a mind for experimentation you should really download this album and give it a fair shake. It's definitely not an easy listening experience, but it's extremely rewarding. For every moment of inspired dementia, such as Oswald's reworking of Michael Jackson's Bad as dab, there are moments of utter beauty like rainbow, an extreme slowing of an orchestral rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. We need more stuff like this, and we need more people bringing up questions about copyright. Copyright can be a great thing, but it's far too easy to be abused, especially when the so-called abuser is either doing no one any harm or the supposed harm caused is greatly overstated.


John Oswald - Plunderphonic


PS-I hope no one is offended by the album art. I've always thought it was hilarious.