From: ajd@itl.itd.umich.edu (Arthur Delano)
Subject: Re: John Oswald's plunderphonic
Organization: Three coins in the espresso
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 00:40:38 GMT

>ringworm@sys6626.bison.mb.ca (Count Ringworm) writes:
>
>>alh@einoed.in-berlin.de (Adrian Le Hanne) writes:
>
>>> How do you get such things? Is there a discography or list of things 
>>> Oswald did?
>> 
>>Most of his stuff has been destroyed.  But there are still bootlegs of 
>>his stuff out there.  He did a a disc for Elektra (I think), a promo for 
>>their aniversary, but that's not for sale.
    ,  ,
_Rubaiyat_: plunderphonics           PRCD 8247-2

If you look in your big-city used music shops, you'll come across one.
Expect to pay collector's prices.  It's not the infamous CD that got
destroyed by court order, although one track comes from that disk.

"Frenzied" is a good descriptive of the piece as a whole, although
"disturbing" also comes to mind.  Oswald works hard at retaining the
basic character of a band's music while changing it into completely
alien forms.

Each track is listed by group and title; Oswald is credited as doing
"music recreation" only.  Each track is more-or-less a melange of an
artist's material, and the notes for each track give detailed descriptions
of sources; i'm not transcribing Oswald's writing here.

1. The Doors: _O'Hell_  3:55
mostly material from "Hello I Love You", but also from 13 other tracks.
Playing this will drive any Doors fan from the room; it's too close to
a real song but too far away from anything coherent.  The most jarring
piece.

2. Metallica: _2_Net_  1:21
_Net_ from the banned CD with Metallica's contribution to the Rubaiyat
compilation mixed in.  The notes only say about Plunderphonic: "1989,
out of print".  The most crazed track, and one of the funniest.

3. Tim Buckley: _Anon_  4:25
Too slow, too weighted down compared to the rest of the tracks.  Although
it is easy to spot what is disturbing in the other tracks (sudden breaks,
abbreviated vocals, modified sounds), this is basically a wash of piano
and strings and a gentle voice, but it fails to soothe.  Not fun.

4. Carly Simon & Faster Pussycat: _Vane_  3:23
Mixing the two versions of "You're So Vain".  Ehh.

5. MC5: _Mother_  2:05
A remix and condensation of the Kick Out The Jams album.  Very fun.

Two quotes from the liner notes.  The first is a note on source material,
the second is the funniest suggestion from "Rejectrix", a list of proposed
but not executed remixes.

"All sources have been faithfully transferred from commercially available
compact disks and phonograph records, or from digital dubs of the stereo
master tape.  No use has been made of multitrack source tapes, studio
outtakes, or of any material that isn't or hasn't been made commerically
available."

"1. A minute long abridgement, reduced to minimal redundancy, of Paul
Butterfield's 'Born in Chicago' slowd down from the equivalent of
45 rpm to 33 1/3 rpm (an option no longer readily available to listeners
in this age of CD's) resulting in a _Blacker_ sound of a more leasurely
temp; while at the same time the sense of the song rushes by."

AjD
Xref: sparky rec.music.misc:20242 alt.rock-n-roll:14028 alt.music.alternative:7932