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John Oswald - 69 Plunderphonics... |
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ALBUM REVIEWSPick of the Chick: Our Favorite Releases, 1999-Present |
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Canada's John Oswald is the godfather of the "cut-and-paste musical collage." Ever since the '80s, he's been cutting up music tapes from other artists and putting them back together in bizarre new configurations. His techniques have been truly innovative and set the stage for just about every artist on the Ninja Tune label today (e.g., Amon Tobin, DJ Food). Of course, with the advent of computer mixing-software, the Ninja Tuners have it ten times easier than Oswald ever did. Although Oswald spliced together some great music, he's pissed off a bunch of people in the process, including Michael Jackson. On the cover of Oswald's 1989 Plunderphonic album, Jackson's image appears with graphic details of a sex change air-brushed into the picture! Oswald's music has also dragged him into a firestorm of copyright infringement issues. On Plunderphonic, Oswald felt that he was changing the original music enough to count as a "new" work of art, and therefore didn't get permission to use the "borrowed" material included on the CD. After threats of litigation, he was forced to destroy all remaining copies of the album or face the record industry in court (a prelude to Napster?). Thanks to the folks at SEELAND (a.k.a., the guys from the band Negativland), the Plunderphonic album is available again, along with a treasure chest of other Oswaldian goodies, on 69 Plunderphonics 96. In addition to the Plunderphonic album, this two-disc set includes the hard-to-find Elektrax EP--material that Elektra Records commissioned Oswald to create for the label's anniversary CD. Because Elektra failed to get proper permission from the Jim Morrison estate and Metallica (Napster?), the original EP was only released as a DJ-promo CD and has been nearly impossible to find since 1991. 69 Plunderphonics 96 also includes various tracks from other hard-to-find Oswald releases, including 1991's Discosphere and 1993's Plexure. Throughout 69 Plunderphonics 96, Oswald "plunders" rock artists like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, the Doors, Metallica, and the MC5. Oswald also combines multiple artists into single tracks--one great example is "Vane," which overlays Carley Simon's version of "You're So Vain" with a version by Faster Pussycat. And it's not just rock-n-rollers who fall prey to Oswald's techniques. He also "plunders" crooners like Bing Crosby, country artists like Dolly Parton, and classical composers like Stravinsky and Beethoven! It makes for a wonderful, yet sometime jarring, blitzkrieg through music history. So you may be asking: How did SEELAND get permission to legitimately release all of this material despite the copyright infringement issues? The answer: They didn't. This album was supposed to be a legitimate release on the Fony label. Once again, "proper" permissions couldn't be attained, so SEELAND stepped in, took over the CD package, and released it on their label. SEELAND is also supposedly "hiding out" from the law, so go buy 69 Plunderphonics 96 before this renegade label gets put in the big house! PIGEONHOLE: A collection of reissued tracks from
the godfather of the "cut-and-paste musical collage."
Andrew Helminger |
JOHN OSWALD
