Plunderphonics
Encyclopedia
Plunderphonics is a term coined by composer John Oswald
in 1985 in his essay
Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative. It has since been applied to any music
made by taking one or more existing audio recordings
and altering them in some way to make a new composition
. Plunderphonics can be considered a form of sound collage
.
Although the concept of plunderphonics is seemingly broad, in practice there are many common themes used in what is normally called plunderphonic music. This includes heavy sampling
of educational film
s of the 1950s, news
reports, radio shows
, or anything with trained vocal announcer
s. Oswald's contributions to this genre rarely used these materials, the exception being his rap
-like 1975 track "Power."
The process of Sampling
other sources is found in various genre
s (notably hip-hop
and especially turntablism
), but in plunderphonic works the sampled material is often the only sound used. These samples are usually uncleared, and sometimes result in legal action being taken due to copyright
infringement. Some plunderphonic artist
s use their work to protest what they consider to be overly-restrictive copyright laws. Many plunderphonic artists claim their use of other artists' materials falls under the fair use
doctrine.
A development of the process is when creative musicians plunder an original track and overlay new material and sounds on top until the original piece is masked and then removed, though often using scales and beat. A studio based technique used by the American experimental band The Residents
(who used Beatles tracks) and the UK band The Perrinormal who have plundered many tracks from classical, folk, rock and jazz but rarely reveal which, except their Hey Joe tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Often the new track has little resemblance to the original, this prevents the musician from infringing copyright but results in a more creative and original piece.
release by John Oswald. Oswald's original use of the word was to indicate a piece which was created from samples of a single artist and no other material. Influenced by William S. Burroughs
' cut-up technique
, he began making plunderphonic recordings in the 1970s. In 1988 he distributed copies of the Plunderphonics EP to the press and to radio station
s. It contained four tracks: "Don't" was an edited version of an Elvis Presley
record; "Pocket" was based on a Count Basie
track; "Pretender" featured Dolly Parton
singing "The Great Pretender" but progressively slowed down so that she sounds like a man; and "Spring" was an edited version of Igor Stravinsky
's The Rite of Spring
, shuffled around and with different parts played on top of one another.
In 1989 Oswald released a greatly expanded album
version of Plunderphonics with twenty-five tracks. As on the EP, each track used material by just one artist. It reworked material by both popular music
ians like The Beatles
, and classical
works such as Ludwig van Beethoven
's Symphony No. 7
. Like the EP, it was never offered for sale. A central idea behind the record was that the fact that all the sounds were "stolen
" should be quite blatant. The packaging listed the sources of the all samples used, but authorization for them to be used on the record was neither sought nor given. All undistributed copies of plunderphonic were destroyed after a threat of legal action from the Canadian Recording Industry Association
on behalf of several of their clients (notably Michael Jackson
, whose song
"Bad" had been chopped into tiny pieces and rearranged as "Dab") who alleged copyright abuses. Various press statements by record industry representatives revealed that a particular item of contention was the album cover art which featured a transformed image of Michael Jackson derived from his Bad cover.
It is often assumed that "plunderphonics" is a brand name that Oswald applies exclusively to his recordings, but he has stated several times that he considers the term to describe a genre of music, with many exponents.
(See Negativland's "Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2
"). While Oswald used easily recognisable and familiar sources, Negativland's sources were sometimes more obscure. 1983's A Big 10-8 Place, for instance, consists of recordings of people talking on the radio. Their next album, Escape From Noise
, like most of their later records, also makes extensive use of spoken-word
samples, often to make particular political
points. Their most famous release, "The Letter U and the Numeral 2
," featured an extended rant from radio DJ
Casey Kasem
and extensively sampled U2
's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
", which resulted in a lawsuit being brought by U2's label
, Island Records
.
Both Oswald and Negativland made their recordings by cutting up magnetic tape
(or later using digital
technology), but several DJs have also produced plunderphonic works using turntables
; in fact, "digging" for samples plays a large part in DJ culture
. Christian Marclay
is a turntablist who has been using other people's records as the sole source of his music making since the late 1970s. He often treats the records in unusual ways, for example, he has physically cut up a group of records and stuck them together, making both a visual and aural collage
. Sometimes several spoken-word or lounge music
records bought from thrift stores
are mashed together to make a Marclay track, but his More Encores album cuts up tracks by the likes of Maria Callas
and Louis Armstrong
in a way similar to Oswald's work on Plunderphonics. Marclay's experimental approach has been taken up by the likes of Roberto Musci
& Giovanni Venosta, Otomo Yoshihide, Philip Jeck
and Martin Tétreault
, although in these artist's works the records used are sometimes heavily disguised and unrecognisable, meaning the results cannot properly be called plunderphonics. Other DJs have worked in a more mainstream style: DJ Shadow
(Endtroducing..., for example), The Avalanches
(Since I Left You, for example) and DJ Food
(Kaleidoscope, for example) have all made albums consisting entirely of material plundered from other records.
The Bran Flakes
and People Like Us
have both used thrift store records to create their music; the Canadian pop band TAS 1000 did the same with thrift store answering machine
tapes. Kid 606 has created quite a bit of plunderphonic work (most notably "The Action Packed Mentallist Bring You the Fucking Jams"), similarly never seeking permission, although his work is sold commercially. Wobbly
is also known for his plunderphonic works, most notably "Wild Why", a CD piece compiled from his own recordings of mainstream Hip-Hop radio from the San Francisco Bay Area
.
Vicki Bennett of People Like Us has extended the plunderphonic ideal to video
, creating film
s to accompany her music by plundering the resources of the Prelinger Archives
, the online part of the collection of film archivist Rick Prelinger
http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger. Anne McGuire used similar techniques in her 1992 film Strain Andromeda The. With permission, McGuire reversed The Andromeda Strain
shot
by shot so that everything unfolded in reverse order, although with each scene running in normal time with comprehensible dialogue
.
Another approach is to take two very different records and play them simultaneously. An early example of this is the Evolution Control Committee's Whipped Cream Mixes (1994), which laid the vocals from Public Enemy's "Rebel Without a Pause" over Herb Alpert
's "Bittersweet Samba." This gave rise to the so-called "bastard pop" or "mash-up
" phenomenon where an a cappella
version of one song is mixed
on top of a purely instrumental
version of another song. Soulwax
and Richard X
have both produced records along these lines.
There are also several Web
-based plunderphonics projects. The Droplift Project created a compilation CD
of plunderphonic works which was then "droplifted" into record stores
(this involved slipping copies of the record onto the shelves without knowledge of the store owner — a sort of reverse stealing). Dictionaraoke
took audio clips from online dictionaries
and stitched them together so that they recited the words of various popular songs while instrumental versions of the music (often in MIDI renderings) played along.
New possibilities in plunderphonics projects are permitted by Dataflow programming languages, such as Pure Data
, Max/Msp, etc., allowing the artist to even release true aleatory works, who will sound differently each time the listener executes the algorithm. Alea T.'s hot01 - 00-09 is an example. The algorithm chops, slices, moves the samples around in aleatory ways. The project can be downloaded in Pure Data Version, for free.
and Bill Buchanan's 1956 single "The Flying Saucer", features Goodman as a radio reporter covering an alien invasion
interspersed with samples from various contemporary records. The Residents
' "Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life" consists of excerpts from Beatles records. Various club
DJs in the 1970s re-edited the records they played, and although this often consisted of nothing more than extending the record by adding a chorus
or two, this too could be considered a form of plunderphonics.
Some classical composer
s have performed a kind of plunderphonia on written
, rather than recorded, music. Perhaps the best known example is the third movement
of Luciano Berio
's Sinfonia
, which is entirely made up from quotes of other composers and writers. Alfred Schnittke
and Mauricio Kagel
have also made extensive use of earlier composers' works. Earlier composers who often plundered the music of others include Charles Ives
(who often quoted folk songs
and hymn
s in his works) and Ferruccio Busoni
(a movement from his 1909 piano
suite
An die Jugend
includes a prelude
and a fugue
by Johann Sebastian Bach
played simultaneously). During the '90s Oswald composed many such scores for classical musicians which he classified with the term Rascali Klepitoire.
In France, Jean-Jacques Birgé
has been working on "radiophonies" since 1974 (for his film "La nuit du phoque"), capturing radio and editing the samples in real time with the pause button of a radio-cassette. His group Un Drame Musical Instantané
recorded "Crimes parfaits" on LP "A travail égal salaire égal" in 1981, explaining the whole process in the piece itself and calling it "social soundscape". He applied the same technique to TV in 1986 on the "Qui vive?" CD and published in 1998 cd-rom
"Machiavel" with Antoine Schmitt
, an interactive video scratch using 111 very small loops from his own past LPs.
Actual Rafiq's first two albums are largely considered plunderphonics, and were constructed from samples of Led Zeppelin, the Japanese TV series "Cowboy Bebop," several Weather Report albums, and various other radio and TV broadcasts.
John Oswald (composer)
John Oswald is a Canadian composer, saxophonist, media artist and dancer. His best known project is Plunderphonics, the practice of making new music out of previously existing recordings .-Philosophy:Oswald coined the term "plunderphonics" to describe his craft in a paper called which he...
in 1985 in his essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative. It has since been applied to any music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
made by taking one or more existing audio recordings
Sound recording and reproduction
Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...
and altering them in some way to make a new composition
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
. Plunderphonics can be considered a form of sound collage
Sound collage
In music, montage or sound collage is a technique where sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage, the use of portions of previous recordings or scores...
.
Although the concept of plunderphonics is seemingly broad, in practice there are many common themes used in what is normally called plunderphonic music. This includes heavy sampling
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
of educational film
Educational film
An educational film is a film or movie whose primary purpose is to educate. Educational films have been used in classrooms as an alternative to other teaching methods.-Cultural significance:...
s of the 1950s, news
News
News is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.- Etymology :...
reports, radio shows
Radio programming
Radio programming is the Broadcast programming of a Radio format or content that is organized for Commercial broadcasting and Public broadcasting radio stations....
, or anything with trained vocal announcer
Announcer
An announcer is a presenter who makes "announcements" in an audio medium or a physical location.-Television and other media:Some announcers work in television production , radio or filmmaking, usually providing narrations, news updates, station identification, or an introduction of a product in...
s. Oswald's contributions to this genre rarely used these materials, the exception being his rap
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...
-like 1975 track "Power."
The process of Sampling
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
other sources is found in various genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
s (notably hip-hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and especially turntablism
Turntablism
Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and a DJ mixer.The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer...
), but in plunderphonic works the sampled material is often the only sound used. These samples are usually uncleared, and sometimes result in legal action being taken due to copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
infringement. Some plunderphonic artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
s use their work to protest what they consider to be overly-restrictive copyright laws. Many plunderphonic artists claim their use of other artists' materials falls under the fair use
Fair use
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
doctrine.
A development of the process is when creative musicians plunder an original track and overlay new material and sounds on top until the original piece is masked and then removed, though often using scales and beat. A studio based technique used by the American experimental band The Residents
The Residents
The Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....
(who used Beatles tracks) and the UK band The Perrinormal who have plundered many tracks from classical, folk, rock and jazz but rarely reveal which, except their Hey Joe tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Often the new track has little resemblance to the original, this prevents the musician from infringing copyright but results in a more creative and original piece.
Plunderphonics (EP)
Plunderphonics was used as the title of an EPExtended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
release by John Oswald. Oswald's original use of the word was to indicate a piece which was created from samples of a single artist and no other material. Influenced by William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
' cut-up technique
Cut-up technique
The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. Most commonly, cut-ups are used to offer a non-linear alternative to traditional reading and writing....
, he began making plunderphonic recordings in the 1970s. In 1988 he distributed copies of the Plunderphonics EP to the press and to radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
s. It contained four tracks: "Don't" was an edited version of an Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
record; "Pocket" was based on a Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
track; "Pretender" featured Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist, best known for her work in country music. Dolly Parton has appeared in movies like 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias and Straight Talk...
singing "The Great Pretender" but progressively slowed down so that she sounds like a man; and "Spring" was an edited version of Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring, original French title Le sacre du printemps , is a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich...
, shuffled around and with different parts played on top of one another.
Plunderphonic (album)
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
version of Plunderphonics with twenty-five tracks. As on the EP, each track used material by just one artist. It reworked material by both popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
ians like The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, and classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
works such as Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's Symphony No. 7
Symphony No. 7 (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, in 1811, was the seventh of his nine symphonies. He worked on it while staying in the Bohemian spa town of Teplice in the hope of improving his health. It was completed in 1812, and was dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries.At its debut,...
. Like the EP, it was never offered for sale. A central idea behind the record was that the fact that all the sounds were "stolen
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...
" should be quite blatant. The packaging listed the sources of the all samples used, but authorization for them to be used on the record was neither sought nor given. All undistributed copies of plunderphonic were destroyed after a threat of legal action from the Canadian Recording Industry Association
Canadian Recording Industry Association
Music Canada is a Toronto-based, non-profit trade organization that was founded 9 April 1963 to represent the interests of companies that record, artists, manufacture, production, promotion and distribution of music in Canada...
on behalf of several of their clients (notably Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
, whose song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
"Bad" had been chopped into tiny pieces and rearranged as "Dab") who alleged copyright abuses. Various press statements by record industry representatives revealed that a particular item of contention was the album cover art which featured a transformed image of Michael Jackson derived from his Bad cover.
Later works
Later works by Oswald, such as Plexure, which lasts just twenty minutes but is claimed to contain around one thousand very short samples of pop music stitched together, are not strictly speaking "plunderphonic" according to Oswald's original conception (he himself used the term megaplundermorphonemiclonic for Plexure), but the term "plunderphonic" is used today in a looser sense to indicate any music completely — or almost completely — made up of samples. 69 plunderphonics 96 is a compilation of Oswald's work, including tracks from the original plunderphonic CD.It is often assumed that "plunderphonics" is a brand name that Oswald applies exclusively to his recordings, but he has stated several times that he considers the term to describe a genre of music, with many exponents.
Works by other artists
Another important early purveyor of what can be described as plunderphonics were NegativlandNegativland
Negativland is an experimental music and sound collage band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! song, while their record label is named after another Neu! song...
(See Negativland's "Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2
Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2
Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 is a 270 page book and ten track CD released in 1995 by Negativland detailing their lawsuits with U2's record label Island Records for their EP U2, including many legal documents and correspondences....
"). While Oswald used easily recognisable and familiar sources, Negativland's sources were sometimes more obscure. 1983's A Big 10-8 Place, for instance, consists of recordings of people talking on the radio. Their next album, Escape From Noise
Escape from Noise
Escape from Noise is a 1987 album by Negativland. It marked the band's first break on an established independent record label, SST Records. On this album, they continued to develop their experimental style. The group also incorporated elements of pop music with shorter tracks and more conventional...
, like most of their later records, also makes extensive use of spoken-word
Spoken word
Spoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....
samples, often to make particular political
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
points. Their most famous release, "The Letter U and the Numeral 2
The Letter U and the Numeral 2
The Letter U and the Numeral 2 is a 96-page magazine and 25-minute CD by Negativland detailing their conflict with the band U2, over Negativland's EP of the same name. It was released in 1992 as a limited edition of 4000 copies...
," featured an extended rant from radio DJ
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
Casey Kasem
Casey Kasem
Kemal Amin "Casey" Kasem is an American radio personality and voice actor who is best known for being the host of the nationally syndicated Top 40 countdown show American Top 40, and for voicing Shaggy in the popular Saturday morning cartoon franchise Scooby-Doo.Kasem, along with Don Bustany and...
and extensively sampled U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" is a song by rock band U2. It is the second track from their 1987 album The Joshua Tree and was released as the album's second single in May 1987...
", which resulted in a lawsuit being brought by U2's label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
, Island Records
Island Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...
.
Both Oswald and Negativland made their recordings by cutting up magnetic tape
Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
(or later using digital
Digital recording
In digital recording, digital audio and digital video is directly recorded to a storage device as a stream of discrete numbers, representing the changes in air pressure for audio and chroma and luminance values for video through time, thus making an abstract template for the original sound or...
technology), but several DJs have also produced plunderphonic works using turntables
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
; in fact, "digging" for samples plays a large part in DJ culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
. Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer.Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film...
is a turntablist who has been using other people's records as the sole source of his music making since the late 1970s. He often treats the records in unusual ways, for example, he has physically cut up a group of records and stuck them together, making both a visual and aural collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
. Sometimes several spoken-word or lounge music
Lounge music
Lounge music is a retrospective description of music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a type of mood music meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place — a jungle, an island paradise, outer space, et cetera — other than where they are listening to it...
records bought from thrift stores
Charity shop
A charity shop, thrift shop, thrift store, hospice shop , resale shop or op shop is a retail establishment run by a charitable organization to raise money.Charity shops are a type of social enterprise...
are mashed together to make a Marclay track, but his More Encores album cuts up tracks by the likes of Maria Callas
Maria Callas
Maria Callas was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century. She combined an impressive bel canto technique, a wide-ranging voice and great dramatic gifts...
and Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
in a way similar to Oswald's work on Plunderphonics. Marclay's experimental approach has been taken up by the likes of Roberto Musci
Roberto Musci
Roberto Musci is a music composer, performer, saxophonist and guitar player.Musci studied saxophone and guitar. From 1974 to 1985 he travelled around the world to study African, Indian, and Near & Far Eastern music, to make field recordings and collect musical instruments...
& Giovanni Venosta, Otomo Yoshihide, Philip Jeck
Philip Jeck
Philip Jeck is an English multimedia composer, magician, choreographer, woodsman and taxidermist. He is perhaps best known for his work Vinyl Requiem with Lol Sargent which won the Time Out Performance Award in 1993...
and Martin Tétreault
Martin Tétreault
Martin Tétreault is a free improvisation musician and visual artist. Often using the turntable as the basis for his experimental music, he has released many collaborative records with people such as Kevin Drumm and Otomo Yoshihide, as well as his own solo work.-External links:* at Discogs...
, although in these artist's works the records used are sometimes heavily disguised and unrecognisable, meaning the results cannot properly be called plunderphonics. Other DJs have worked in a more mainstream style: DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow
Joshua Paul Davis better known as DJ Shadow is an American music producer, DJ and songwriter. He is considered a prominent figure in the development of instrumental hip hop and first gained notice with the release of his highly acclaimed debut album Endtroducing....., which was constructed...
(Endtroducing..., for example), The Avalanches
The Avalanches
The Avalanches are an Australian electronic music group formed in 1997 with mainstays Robbie Chater on keyboards, Tony Diblasi on keyboards, bass and backing vocals, and Darren Seltmann on vocals and keyboards. They are known for their live DJ sets and their debut album Since I Left You , which was...
(Since I Left You, for example) and DJ Food
DJ Food
Originally produced by Coldcut on the Ninja Tune independent record label, the DJ Food project started in 1990 on the premise of providing metaphorical "food for DJs". DJ Food released the Jazz Brakes series, with Jazz Brakes Volume 3 being the most successful...
(Kaleidoscope, for example) have all made albums consisting entirely of material plundered from other records.
The Bran Flakes
The Bran Flakes
The Bran Flakes are a sound collage pop group with members in the United States and Canada who specialize in creating music from pre-existing sources...
and People Like Us
People Like Us (musician)
People Like Us is the stage name of London DJ multimedia artist Vicki Bennett. She has released a number of albums featuring collages of music and sound since 1992. In recent years, she has performed at a number of modern art galleries, festivals and universities.-Musical career:Since 1991 Vicki...
have both used thrift store records to create their music; the Canadian pop band TAS 1000 did the same with thrift store answering machine
Answering machine
The answering machine or message machine, also known as the telephone answering machine in the UK and some Commonwealth countries) and previously known as an ansaphone, ansafone, or telephone answering device is a device for answering telephones and recording callers' messages.Unlike voicemail,...
tapes. Kid 606 has created quite a bit of plunderphonic work (most notably "The Action Packed Mentallist Bring You the Fucking Jams"), similarly never seeking permission, although his work is sold commercially. Wobbly
Wobbly (band)
Wobbly is the moniker of Jon Leidecker a San Francisco based musician/composer of experimental electronic music. He has released works on Tigerbeat6, Illegal Art, Alku, Phthalo, and others...
is also known for his plunderphonic works, most notably "Wild Why", a CD piece compiled from his own recordings of mainstream Hip-Hop radio from the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
.
Vicki Bennett of People Like Us has extended the plunderphonic ideal to video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
, creating film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s to accompany her music by plundering the resources of the Prelinger Archives
Prelinger Archives
The Prelinger Archives is a collection of films relating to U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life and social history...
, the online part of the collection of film archivist Rick Prelinger
Rick Prelinger
Rick Prelinger is an archivist, writer and filmmaker, and founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002 after 20 years' operation.Rick has partnered with the Internet Archive to make...
http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger. Anne McGuire used similar techniques in her 1992 film Strain Andromeda The. With permission, McGuire reversed The Andromeda Strain
The Andromeda Strain (film)
The Andromeda Strain is a 1971 American science-fiction film, based on the novel published in 1969 by Michael Crichton. The film is about a team of scientists who investigate a deadly organism of extraterrestrial origin that causes rapid, fatal blood clotting. Directed by Robert Wise, the film...
shot
Shot (film)
In film, a shot is a continuous strip of motion picture film, created of a series of frames, that runs for an uninterrupted period of time. Shots are generally filmed with a single camera and can be of any duration. A shot in production, defined by the beginning and end of a capturing process, is...
by shot so that everything unfolded in reverse order, although with each scene running in normal time with comprehensible dialogue
Dialogue (fiction)
Dialogue in fiction is a verbal exchange between two or more characters. If there is only one character, who is talking to himself in his mind, it is known as interior monologue.-Identifiers:...
.
Another approach is to take two very different records and play them simultaneously. An early example of this is the Evolution Control Committee's Whipped Cream Mixes (1994), which laid the vocals from Public Enemy's "Rebel Without a Pause" over Herb Alpert
Herb Alpert
Herbert "Herb" Alpert is an American musician most associated with the group variously known as Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, or TJB. He is also a recording industry executive — he is the "A" of A&M Records...
's "Bittersweet Samba." This gave rise to the so-called "bastard pop" or "mash-up
Mashup (music)
A mashup or bootleg is a song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another...
" phenomenon where an a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
version of one song is mixed
Audio mixing (recorded music)
In audio recording, audio mixing is the process by which multiple recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, most commonly two-channel stereo. In the process, the source signals' level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are manipulated and effects such as reverb may...
on top of a purely instrumental
Instrumental
An instrumental is a musical composition or recording without lyrics or singing, although it might include some non-articulate vocal input; the music is primarily or exclusively produced by musical instruments....
version of another song. Soulwax
Soulwax
Soulwax, headed by David and Stephen Dewaele, are an alternative rock/electronic band from Ghent, Belgium. Next to the Dewaele brothers, Soulwax consists of bassist Stefaan Van Leuven and drummer Steve Slingeneyer. They were first noticed after the release of their album Much Against Everyone's...
and Richard X
Richard X
Richard Philips, best known by his stage name Richard X, is a British songwriter and music producer. Gaining attention as a pioneer of the bootleg craze, Richard X has earned success as a producer and remixer. He has helmed hit singles for artists including Annie, Kelis, Liberty X, Rachel Stevens...
have both produced records along these lines.
There are also several Web
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
-based plunderphonics projects. The Droplift Project created a compilation CD
Compilation album
A compilation album is an album featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, genre, source or subject matter...
of plunderphonic works which was then "droplifted" into record stores
Record shop
A record shop or record store is an outlet that sells recorded music. Although vinyl records and audio cassettes are no longer sold in the majority of music stores, in favour of compact discs and home video recordings products, people in some countries, like the UK, still use the term "record...
(this involved slipping copies of the record onto the shelves without knowledge of the store owner — a sort of reverse stealing). Dictionaraoke
Dictionaraoke
Dictionaraoke is the use of online dictionary pronunciation audio files in conjunction with an instrumental version of a song, substituting the dictionary audio files for the song’s lyrics, thus simulating the “singing” of the song, karaoke style.-History:The Dictionaraoke Project was conceived of...
took audio clips from online dictionaries
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
and stitched them together so that they recited the words of various popular songs while instrumental versions of the music (often in MIDI renderings) played along.
New possibilities in plunderphonics projects are permitted by Dataflow programming languages, such as Pure Data
Pure Data
Pure Data is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open source project with a large developer base working on new extensions to it. It is...
, Max/Msp, etc., allowing the artist to even release true aleatory works, who will sound differently each time the listener executes the algorithm. Alea T.'s hot01 - 00-09 is an example. The algorithm chops, slices, moves the samples around in aleatory ways. The project can be downloaded in Pure Data Version, for free.
Earlier examples
Although the term plunderphonics tends to be applied only to music made since Oswald coined it in the 1980s, there are several examples of earlier music made along similar lines. Notably, Dickie GoodmanDickie Goodman
Richard Dorian "Dickie" Goodman was an American music producer.-Career:In June 1956 Goodman created his first record, "The Flying Saucer", which he co-wrote with his partner Bill Buchanan, and featured a four-minute rewriting of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio show...
and Bill Buchanan's 1956 single "The Flying Saucer", features Goodman as a radio reporter covering an alien invasion
Alien invasion
The alien invasion is a common theme in science fiction stories and film, in which extraterrestrial life invades Earth either to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it under a colonial system, harvest humans for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether.The...
interspersed with samples from various contemporary records. The Residents
The Residents
The Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....
' "Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life" consists of excerpts from Beatles records. Various club
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
DJs in the 1970s re-edited the records they played, and although this often consisted of nothing more than extending the record by adding a chorus
Refrain
A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...
or two, this too could be considered a form of plunderphonics.
Some classical composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
s have performed a kind of plunderphonia on written
Musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...
, rather than recorded, music. Perhaps the best known example is the third movement
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...
of Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...
's Sinfonia
Sinfonia (Berio)
Sinfonia is a composition by the Italian composer Luciano Berio which was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary...
, which is entirely made up from quotes of other composers and writers. Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...
and Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel was a German-Argentine composer. He was notable for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance .-Biography:...
have also made extensive use of earlier composers' works. Earlier composers who often plundered the music of others include Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
(who often quoted folk songs
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
and hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
s in his works) and Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
(a movement from his 1909 piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
An die Jugend
An die Jugend
An die Jugend is a sequence of pieces of classical music for solo piano by Ferruccio Busoni.- Plan of the work :The collection was written June–August 1909 and consists of four volumes, the last with an epilogue. It was published later in the same year by Zimmermann of Leipzig under four separate...
includes a prelude
Prelude (music)
A prelude is a short piece of music, the form of which may vary from piece to piece. The prelude can be thought of as a preface. It may stand on its own or introduce another work...
and a fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
by Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
played simultaneously). During the '90s Oswald composed many such scores for classical musicians which he classified with the term Rascali Klepitoire.
In France, Jean-Jacques Birgé
Jean-Jacques Birgé
Jean-Jacques Birgé is an independent French musician and filmmaker, at once music composer , film director , multimedia author , sound designer Jean-Jacques Birgé is an independent French musician and filmmaker, at once music composer (co-founder of Un Drame Musical Instantané which with he records...
has been working on "radiophonies" since 1974 (for his film "La nuit du phoque"), capturing radio and editing the samples in real time with the pause button of a radio-cassette. His group Un Drame Musical Instantané
Un Drame Musical Instantané
Un Drame Musical Instantané, since its creation in 1976, featuring Jean-Jacques Birgé, Bernard Vitet and Francis Gorgé, has decided to promote collective musical creation, co-signing their albums, which they consider as artworks in themselves, or their live shows which they try to renew every time...
recorded "Crimes parfaits" on LP "A travail égal salaire égal" in 1981, explaining the whole process in the piece itself and calling it "social soundscape". He applied the same technique to TV in 1986 on the "Qui vive?" CD and published in 1998 cd-rom
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
"Machiavel" with Antoine Schmitt
Antoine Schmitt
Antoine Schmitt is a French contemporary artist, programming engineer and designer.- Biography :Antoine Schmitt was a self-made programmer at the age of 16....
, an interactive video scratch using 111 very small loops from his own past LPs.
Actual Rafiq's first two albums are largely considered plunderphonics, and were constructed from samples of Led Zeppelin, the Japanese TV series "Cowboy Bebop," several Weather Report albums, and various other radio and TV broadcasts.
External links
- Interview with John Oswald (2010) for Ràdio Web MACBA http://rwm.macba.cat/uploads/songs/sonia99_18032010_96.mp3
- Radio Feature The Some Assembly RequiredSome Assembly RequiredSome Assembly Required is a sound collage radio program in the United States, produced in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the first radio show known to focus exclusively on works of sample based music, and appropriation in audio art...
Interview with John Oswald (2001) - "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative" — an essay by John Oswald
- plunderphonics.com — website created by Oswald cohort Phil Strong
- pfony.com — Oswald's record label: includes some current info on his other activities
- http://www.ccutler.com/ccutler select WRITING. A comprehensive history and analysis of plunderphonia.
- detritus.net — deals with recycled art in all areas, especially music
- Dictionaraoke
- The Droplift Project
- The Snuggles mailing list — home of the audio/video artists who created Dictionaraoke and Droplift
- Illegal Art
- We Edit Life (Vicki Bennett's Movie)
- Smells Like Booty: Plunderphonics, Samples and Bootlegs by Kenneth Goldsmith
- Variations A series on Sampling Music by Jon Leidecker for Ràdio Web MACBA