John Oswald (composer)

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John Oswald (born May 30, 1953 in Kitchener, Ontario) is a Canadian composer, saxophonist, photographer, and dancer. His best known project is Plunderphonics, the practice of making new music out of previously existing recordings (see sound collage and musical montage). He was a student of R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax at Simon Fraser University and of David Rosenboom, Casey Sokol, Richard Teitelbaum, and James Tenney at York University.

Oswald has been devising illegitimate compositions since the late '60s. His 1975 track "Power" married frenetic Led Zeppelin guitars to the impassioned exhortations of a Southern US evangelist at least 10 years before hip hop discovered the potency of the same (and related) ingredients. Similarly, his 1990 track "Vane", which pitted two different versions of the song "You're So Vain" (the Carly Simon original and a cover by Faster Pussycat) against each other, was a blueprint for the contemporary bastard pop subgenre, glitch pop. Oswald coined the term "plunderphonics" to describe his illegitimate craft. In 1993 Oswald released Plexure. Arguably his most ambitious composition to date, it attempted to microsample the history of CD music up to that point (1982 - 1992) in a 20 minute collage of bewildering complexity. The ambition of this piece would later be recalled by the British bootlegger Osymyso, whose "Intro-Inspection" captured the pop-junkie feel of Plexure. Osymyso, who at the time was unaware of Oswald's work, used the same structure of an accelerando (putting his source material in an order from the slowest tempo to the fastest), to link a few bars each of 100 songs, creating a simpler sound than the thousands of overlapping and morphing pop "electroquotations" in Plexure.

In addition to his extensive work in plunderphonics, Oswald is also involved with acoustic music, as a composer and improvisor. His compositions for orchestra often do include electronic elements, such as Concerto for Wired Conductor and Orchestra (?), but has also composed for acoustic ensembles, such as Acupuncture (1991). Oswald improvises with the saxophone.

Oswald's record label fony has 2 releases : 69plunderphonics96 and the 2004 reissue of GRAYFOLDED. More info at http://www.pfony.com/

Oswald is also actively involved in dance, as a composer for dance works, as a collaborator with choreographers, and as an active Contact Improviser.

"If creativity is a field, copyright is the fence" - John Oswald.

[edit] Discography

Short Attack (?)
Burrows (1974-75)
Power (1975)
Improvised (1978)
Moose and Salmon (Music Gallery, 1979)
Alto Sax (Metalanguage, 1981)
Plunderphonics EP (1988)
Plunderphonics CD (1989)
Electrax (1991)
Discophere (1991)
Acoustics (1993) - with Henry Kaiser, Jim O'Rourke, and Mari Kimura
Plexure (1993)
Grayfolded (1994) - a two cd mix of over 100 versions of the Grateful Dead song "Dark Star"
Parcours scénographique (1997)
Plunderphonics 69-96 (Box set) (2000)
Complicité (2001) - with Paul Plimley, Marilyn Crispell and Cecil Taylor
Bloor (2001) - with David Prentice and Dominic Duval
Dearness (2002) - with Anne Bourne and Fred Frith
Aparanthesi (empreintes DIGITALes, IMED 0368, 2003)
Arc d’apparition (DVD) and Whisperfield (CD) (2004)

[From UBUWEB] http://www.ubu.com/sound/oswald.html

Oswald first came to notice as an habitué in the mid-1970s of the Music Gallery, where his affiliations included Pitch (established in 1976 with Marvin Green and responsible for a variety of events held in total darkness), the Glass Orchestra, the New Music Co-op and, as founder and sometime editor, Musicworks. Oswald has performed throughout Canada and in the USA as an alto saxophonist, playing in both solo and group improvisational settings. Under Oswald's direction Pool, an improvisation collective originally established at the Gallery in 1979, was held on a weekly basis 1982-8 at the Cameron Public House. In dance, he has prepared scores (mostly tape) for Dancemakers, Tangente, Toronto Independent Dance Enterprise, and Bill Coleman's North American Experience (the full-length ballets Shane, 1987; Baryshnikov, 1987; Zorro, 1989), and for several choreographers - eg, Jennifer Mascall (Parade, 1986; Elle, 1989), Paula Ravitz and Denise Fujiwara (Skindling Shades,1987; renamed Spontaneous Combustion) and Fujiwara alone (Loud Colors, 1990), Holly Small (Wounded, 1988, Small Attack, 1990), Bill Douglas (Anima, 1990), and James Kudelka (Case of Death, 1991). He has participated as an accompanist and/or dancer in performances by Fujiwara, Small, Danceworks, the North American Experience, and others.

In 1980 Oswald established the Mystery Tapes Laboratory, preparing and distributing music/sound collages on cassettes packaged with neither sources noted nor explanations given. In 1987 he reversed the principle with the EP Plunderphonics, which comprised four 'revised performances' created by the 'plundering' of recordings by Count Basie, Dolly Parton, and Elvis Presley, and of The Rite of Spring. A CD of Plunderphonics followed in 1989, with an additional 20 plundered performances. Although Oswald's sources were scrupulously acknowedged and the recordings given free of charge to musicians, critics, libraries, etc, the CD nevertheless was deemed to be in violation of Canadian copyright laws. Under the threat of legal action Oswald relinquished the master tapes and all undistributed copies to CRIA which in 1990 had them destroyed, a year before Negativland got sued for their U2 EP. Ironically, Oswald was subsequently commissioned by the US label Elektra to plunder its catalogue and prepared the CD Rubáiyát Plunderphonics (issued in 1991) to mark the company's 40th anniversary. Oswald has received other commissions from Arraymusic (Slide Whistles, 1976; Acupuncture, 1991) and the Kronos Quartet, and has prepared scores for the Recto Verso theatre company of Matane, Québec. His first piece for the Kronos, Spectre (1990), is in the composer's words 'for gesturing string quartet and the recorded allusion of a 1001 string orchestra'.

from [1] :

MYSTERY (X) TAPES: This is the introduction from the fabled, illuminated, small-print-ridden MYSTERY TAPES ETC. catalog (censored text is reproduced from the original): "The known world is a noisey ball"

Press the button for reproduction - all known Xperience is potentially confounded by MYSTERY TAPES, little boxes of sonifericity specifically formulated for the curious listener. Available in your choice of aural flavors: subliminal, blasted, excerpted, repeatpeateatattttttedly, these cinemaphonically-concocted aggregates of trés different but exquisitely manifest, unprecedentedly varied festerings of audio quality fine magnetic cassette tapes are the best of whatever you've been listening for.

Histrionic Exegesis: Founded in the early XXXX as a manufacturing and distribution arm for the seminal and severe... Mystery Laboratory, in various guises to enhance widespread public confusion, quickly expanded its research and influence with a further series of carefully crafted forays...

Other Bubbles: But it was with the advent of the MYSTERY (X) TAPE concept that things got really confusing. This world-encompassing armada of crafty compilations necessarily by definition bears only slight explanation. The concept: to ferret and fashion; to appropriate against (dices error) all odds, to place in cahoots, a cornucopia of essential and vivacious sounds from everywhere and whenever; to map them into vortextual sequences and overlaps, symphonies and cacophonies, cartoons and realisions, typically byzantine in format. Pop stars deform and implode, the Classics get what's coming to 'em, the future of music explored by amnesiac reversal; compositionalists and theatricians expound and breethd, utterances glow (the proof in slow motion) sounds emerge; sound of short circuit might be simulated by dripping water on red hot metal; if smell is related to time, then sound is some current in space (navy blue with swiss cheese dots), undefinable music vaults... wonderful sounds for wondering ears.

-And here's an excerpt from the final MYSTERY TAPES ETC. newsletter (late '94):

Research & production for the Mystery (or X) Tape line took place mostly in the 2 decades from the early '70s to the release of the plunderphonic CD in late '89. Since then most of our production focus has been on CDs, which have all been released by 3rd parties. But part of the tenet for the Mystery Tapes has been that, like computer software, they would be revised as improvements were developed. At present the latest versions of the X-tapes are: GX v.4 \ X map v.0 LX v.2 \ X5 v.3.1 X2 v.3 \ X1 v.3 MX v.2 \ X3 v.1.3 The backside of SAMPLER was last replaced in mid '86. Both sides were revised twice 5 years later in the process of transferring the tapes to a digital mastering format. GUITARS was revised in '87 (dropping its old title "Mah Jongg Hell" & adding 2 new tracks. DRUMS (previously entitled "L---- D---- ") received a major revision related to the plunderphonic project in '89. Some of the X map versions sent out were beta test revisions. A revised X-map tape was initiated but its completion has been temporarily interrupted by the latest plunderphonics.

Now, although this process is not yet finished, we have decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Mystery Tapes International! (dating from the reversible reel copies of BurrOughs) mail order distribution service in an unusual way by making it even more difficult to get these tapes. In the past it has been our policy to insure that the information about the tapes was obscure, while the process of ordering & obtaining tapes was to be easy & pleasant. No more. For the forthcoming period (of undisclosed duration) we will not tell you how to get MysteryTapes.

Audios, Terri Firm director of international mail order services