John Oswald

John Oswald (b. 1953, Kitchener, Ontario) began splicing tape as a teenager and, in the 1970s at Simon Fraser University, contributed to R. Murray Schafer’s World Soundscape Project. In 1985 he presented “Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative,” a paper naming and defending a compositional method built from unmistakably recognizable fragments of existing recordings — deliberately “blatant” plundering, in his own phrase, distinct from anonymous sampling. His 1989 CD Plunderphonic, manufactured at his own expense and distributed for free, included “Dab,” a manipulation of Michael Jackson’s “Bad”; acting for Jackson’s label CBS/Sony, the Canadian Recording Industry Association forced the destruction of all unsold copies over the 1989 Christmas holiday under threat of legal action. Oswald extended the method on Plexure (1993), a twenty-minute collage drawn from a decade of pop recordings, and Grayfolded (1994–95), a Grateful Dead–commissioned rework of more than 100 live performances of “Dark Star.” He has performed and recorded with, among others, Jim O’Rourke.