Plunderphonics / Collage
Plunderphonics / Collage builds music from pre-existing recordings, media fragments, samples, advertisements, radio speech, pop records, film sound, and cultural debris. Its sound can be chopped, humorous, psychedelic, illegal-sounding, nostalgic, critical, danceable, or densely informational; the edit is often the main compositional gesture. It treats recorded culture as a raw material and asks who owns memory once it has been pressed, broadcast, digitized, and replayed.
History
The family has roots in tape collage, musique concrète, radio art, Dada photomontage, hip-hop sampling, dub, and DJ culture, but it becomes explicit through John Oswald’s plunderphonics concept and Negativland’s media-collage activism. The Tape-beatles, People Like Us, The Evolution Control Committee, Christian Marclay, The Avalanches, DJ Shadow, The KLF, Girl Talk, and bootleg mashup producers expanded collage into art galleries, underground tapes, sampledelic albums, legal controversies, and dance-floor hybrids. It influenced sampling aesthetics, copyright debate, internet remix culture, hauntology, mashups, vaporwave, experimental hip-hop, and the everyday assumption that recorded history can be recomposed.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Dab — John OswaldSpotifyYouTube
- Christianity Is Stupid — NegativlandSpotifyYouTube
- Frontier Psychiatrist — The AvalanchesSpotifyYouTube
- A Cold Freezin’ Night — The BooksSpotifyYouTube
- The Sound of the End of Music — People Like UsSpotifyYouTube
- Rocked by Rape — The Evolution Control CommitteeSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- John Oswald writings
- UbuWeb
- AllMusic
- Discogs