MUSIC
He jacks wax and sax
Plunderphonics pioneer John Oswald showcases his improv jazz side
by JOHNSON CUMMINS oronto’s John Oswald is a T man with many hats, but he’s probably best known for his Plunderphonics series, which predated the advent of sampling, turntablism, mash-ups and glitch pop by over a decade. Long before the industry was warning that “home taping is killing music,” Oswald was taking William S. Burroughs’ and Brion Gysin’s cut-and-paste method for the written word and applying it to music. Oswald initially deconstructed existing music through crude editing techniques, cutting reel-to-reel tapes of unrelated source material, and was able to create something with a whole new vocabulary. Some of his more famous plundering projects included merging the pummelling of Led Zeppelin with a Southern preacher, a reworking of Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” edited versions of an Elvis Presley record and Dolly Parton’s rendition of “The Great Pretender,” a reworking of the Grateful Dead’s classic “Dark Star” and more. Oswald is also a well-known 12 MONTREAL MIRROR JUNE 18 - JUNE 24 2009 composer and visual artist, with his appearance at this year’s Suoni per il Popolo festival featuring his improvisational side in a trio setting with percussionist Germaine Liu and trombonist Scott Thomson. “For the past 30 years, I’ve felt more like a retired, professional, improvisational saxophone player,” says Oswald over the phone from Toronto. “In the ’70s, I tried to be fairly business-like about doing gigs, but when I saw that in other players, I found it was really detrimental to what I like the most about improvisational music. Composing music has been my livelihood for several decades now and improvisational music is quite different from my day job. This is like a major hobby to me, just something I like to do after a long, gruelling day in the studio. There really isn’t a central theme in the different things I do, as I really like to keep all of them separate.” Oswald’s tool of choice in an improvisational setting has always been saxophone—oddly, an instrument that, for the most part, he doesn’t enjoy listening to. After stealing a saxophone from a high school music class, he quickly bonded with the instrument. While still in his tender teens, Oswald was combing the jazz bins and found the early Sun Ra Arkestra recordings ESP and Heliocentric Worlds Volume 1, based on their lurid covers, but it was sounds of alto players Danny Davis and current Sun Ra musical director Marshall Allen that got him hooked. “At the time, I wasn’t sure if I was hearing Davis or Allen, but I just really liked that sound and was really attracted to it—but I don’t think most people will hear those people’s influence in my playing. I don’t want to second-guess the audience but if they can hear any type of influence, it would be quite distant and delicate. What we will be doing could be called automatic improvisation, free improvisation or improvised improvisation, as we really don’t know what we are going to be doing until we do it. I’ve played with the people in this trio quite a bit over the years and it’s still a complete mystery. We don’t really ever talk about what we’re going to do and I think if we felt we kind of knew what we are going to do it would be less attractive than it is.” ■ WITH ERIC CHENAUX AND RYAN DRIVER AT LA SALA ROSSA ON FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 8:30 P.M., $15 IT’S A PLUNDER-FUL LIFE: John Oswald
