FONY : John Oswald's 'record' label and audible endeavours

Varèse Zappa Oswald

a series series of concerts in Vancouver Canada by Turning Point featured the compositions of Edgard Varèse, Frank Zappa and,
Refuse, a new work by John Oswald for supersized sinfonietta.

• a quarter century later

a note about this image

Hallowe'en 2016 (27th anniversary of its original release on the original PLUNDERPHONIC CD)

Back then all copies were distributed for free— but by Xmas the major record companies,

in holiday spirits, threatened legal action to prevent any further gift-giving.
Now, over a quarter century later, on this bizarrely festive date, the first official music video from that notorious album is released ('dropped' sounds too thoughtless and depressing). A recent injunction from Sony (France) concerning another Fony track, leads us to encourage ripping / downloading / archiving this video immediately, because nothing is always…

Stunning, possibly seizure inducing plunderphonics —Richard Gehr

currently available on youTube
https://youtu.be/Rhck5dVP9AA

and Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/189522315

—Get it while you can—

about the making of the DAB soundtrack

DAB video stills

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polaris music heritage prize

(September 2016) For the 2nd year a jury has proposed a shortlist selection of the the most 'influential and important' Canadian music albums of all time (or at least since 1965) which now includes the notorious 1989 plunderphonic CD (follow the link and click the "U" to find downloads).

update: the plunderphonic CD didn't win.

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transitive axis Live

During a very busy month (May 2015) in Bologna at the AngelicA Festival there was a plunderphotonics etc. video night (following an excellent Christian Marclay video evening), an orchestral night, and the world premiere of Transitive Axis Live featuring transcriber/conductor Domenico Caliri and a hand-picked nonet of crackerjack musicians performing this very complex and accurate 900 bar transcription.

Domenico Caliri conducts the Transitive Axis Live! band

Then in November John Oswald reconvened in Vignola (a town near Bologna) with Calari and producer Massimo Simonini to edit and mix the Transitive Axis Live shows for a publishable recording (a release date will be announced when Oswald finally finishes the mix).

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new neighbourhoods

To the right are links for Fony's presence on Facebook and Twitter.

The facebook page has an interesting timeline history (in-progress)of recordings released.

The first twitters announce the 25th anniversary of the initial release of the first plunderphonic compact disc on Hallowe'en in 1989.

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paused on the threshold…

New videos are being uploaded to the excellent plunderphonics site over at youtube.

|watch the video|

(October 2014) Several of these videos and 8 dances with oswaldian soundtracks were presented with choreographer Holly Small in a variety-packed half-hour in Vancouver on a Small Stage

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a third plunderphonic disc

Due to dumbing-down of newer CD players, particularly in computerized devices, some of which won't play the tunes disc, we are adding a bonus alternate of it in physical 69plunderphonics96 sets.

John Oswald's memo about the bonus disc

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Grayfolded on vinyl

(August 2014) IMPORTANT RECORDS releases a 3LP triple gatefold revised set — info & ordering

watch the GRAYFOLDED trailer

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I'd love to turn

is the title of a new orchestral composition by John Oswald (part of his Rascali Klepitoire) commissioned by the BBC premiered on May the 10th 2014 as part of the Tectonics Festival in Glasgow Scotland, directed by conductor Ilan Volkov.

The piece revisits the late Sixties through the music of György Ligeti, Terry Riley, and The Beatles.

The premiere performance was recorded for radio broadcast, and can be heard worldwide (only for the week of May 24-31,2014) on the BBC : search for the programme Hear and Now|here|. After the initial broadcast week, the concert will still be accessible as a podcast, but only in the UK.

Anyway, hear the beginning of I'd Love to Turn |here|

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a well-prepared piano

Back in the early '90's John Oswald, sometimes with Christopher Butterfield, produced a very few recordings using exclusively, or in part, an ambisonic microphone. There were two piano discs produced, studies in what Oswald has described as the instrument's 'big acoustic footprint'. Now, after a quarter of a century a 3rd piano disc has been released by Arraymusic

|hear here|

It's Henry Kucharzyk's playing John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes on a prepared piano. The recordings were done onstage at the Premiere Dance Theatre in Toronto during the day prior to an concert presentation (and recording) that evening. John Abram writes 'It's one of the best recordings I've ever heard.'

|hear another track|

The cover drawing is a never-realized giant Cage memorial by Claus Oldenburg.

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new plunderphonics video channel

that's Dally Proton on the left, beside Igor Stravinsky (a.k.a. Tsar Rosy Viking)

| Click Here for the PLUNDERPHONICS channel |

We've finally put some plunderphonic videos up on the ubiquitous youTube, initially in response to recent interest in how Dolly Parton sounds slowed down. | Click Here for some of the back story|

| Click Here to see Dolly do Jolene both ways|

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the 9 symphonies of Beethoven…

in 30 minutes

The Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt, Germany have commissioned John Oswald to compose a major chamber orchestra composition. b9 is a condensation of the six to seven hours of music that comprise the nine completed symphonies of Ludwig Van Beethoven. It is in the Rascali Klepitoire. The Ensemble premiered the piece January 29th 2011, with Harmut Keil conducting.

| listen to b9 except |

In 2013 the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with Ilan Volkov conducting, performed the first half of the full orchestra revision of b9.

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Plexure on vinyl...

Garth Brownsteen image by John Oswald (ca.1992)

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FONY released Oswald's Plexure on vinyl on October 24th to coincide with celebrations at

the X AVANT Festival in Toronto to mark the 25th Anniversary of plunderphonics.

prePlexure features two new mixes of Oswald's 1993 composition, which was originally commissioned by John Zorn for release on compact disc on his AVANT label.

| Click here to view fony prePlexure Release Sheet... |

The two new mixes are "prePlex" and "PlexureConcentrate".

| Click Here to listen to an excerpt of prePlex .... |

Order prePlexure vinyl on-line at: CDBaby or electroCD

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Michael Jackson Vowels

This soundfile is a layer peeled from the final section of the composition DAB, performed by Michael Jackson and composed by John Oswald back in 1989. The sonic content consists of the all the vowels Mr Jackson sang in the recording Bad. Click the green Play button below to hear it.

The entire track DAB attributed to the anagramatic Alien Chasm Jock can be found here:

| apple | or here: | amazon | and elsewhere.

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Appropos

As part of the group art show Appropos at the Edward Day Gallery 952 Queen Street West (at Shaw) Toronto from July 3rd to July 27th 2008, a selection of enlarged prints of plunderphonic album cover art, rare items from the '80's and '90's, is being exhibited. Currently only half of the covers are on display so please ask the staff at the gallery to show you the rest. Copies of the very rare 1988 Plunderphonics 12" vinyl EP will also be available for sale, with proceeds going to the making and donation of a chronophotic plasma image to Toronto Sick Kids Hospital.

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A Time to Hear for Here

Street view of the ROM Crystal + A Time To Hear for Here fissure

John Oswald's A Time to Hear for Here is a five-story high circadian mobile in sound that can in an unpredictable interval transform from a whisper in Mecca to a storm in Moncton. Distributed over dozens of loudspeakers and throughout each unique day are thousands of never ending combinations of sonic signifiers and musical moments in six-dimensional aural-architechtural time/space. Located in the new space-age wing of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, one of the largest natural and cultural history museums in North America, the exhibit is freely accessible daily, near the main entrance.

| Click Here to view a video Overview of A Time To Hear For Here |

| Download a daily schedule in pdf format for A Time To Hear for Here |

Several times a day, most of the system is employed to play one of several versions of Qui, which features up to 29 voices singing together in different languages. Qui was one subject of a recent cover story profile in Musicworks Magazine, but a short selective history of the piece in relation to some of its antecedents, by Anne Bourne, was edited out. You can read it here .

| Click Here to view The making of Qui - a short video |

please note that, as of 2014, although it is still working and the 35 channel sound system is still installed, the ROM quite often has something other than A time to hear for here running in the space — and the 35-channel sound system is not being used.

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pre prePlexure ...

John Oswald

In the Fall of 2009 Oswald designed a very-limited edition of what would the following year become the vinyl LP prePlexure. Each 2-sided disc was indivitually cut on absolutely clear plexiglas by Moritz Illner of the Duophonic Lab in Munich. These were packaged in clear multilayered sleeves, each one numbered with a unique individual signature for each, with signatures by Cher, David Bowie, Olivia Newton and other '80's pop stars.

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on Burroughs and Burrows ...

from Tate Talks (www.tate.org.uk) January, 2005:

"From Marcel Duchamp's 'Erratum Musical' (1913) which spliced together dictionary definitions of the word 'imprimer' with a score composed from notes pulled out of a hat, via William Burroughs's and Brion Gysin's 'cut-up' technique used to allow new meanings to 'leak in' by re-cutting existing texts, to John Oswald's releases which mixed and altered several musical sources, the history of the 20th century avant-garde can be read as the history of appropriation." - Lina Dzuverovic

John Oswald replies:
"Nice to see these connections mentioned in the same sentence. In the early '70's I spent an inordinate amount of time constructing some miniature tape pieces, which I call 'Burrows', based on texts as read by Bill Burroughs. My first attempt at audio publishing, in 1975, was not vinyl or cassette but a set of 10 of these Burrows on reel-to-reel.

Many of the Burrows pieces have an odd characteristic - they are reversible compositions, incorporating things like acoustic palindromes (when you play Bill Burroughs saying "I GOT" backwards it still, amazingly sounds like "I GOT"). I realize now I could have made cassette tapes which you could flip over at any point and hear the piece backwards, but at the time I was technically quite literal, and I dubbed full-track (one mono track that is the full width of the tape) reel-to-reel tapes, and edited leader between the pieces (this is the reel-to-reel form of indexing) which, when played on any reel-to-reel playback machine in either direction would give the desired results, as long as it was played at the right speed. There was also a bonus tape loop that came in the box.

I made a few of these dubs but I never managed to sell one and I don't remember giving any away, so as a publishing venture it was a bust."

| Click Here to play 8 of the Burrows 'tapes'.... |

A different sounding sequence of the Burrows pieces with a couple of other bits added has just been published on CD as SFU 40 1965-2005 by Cambridge Street Records.

| More Info about SFU 40 1965-2005|

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space horns

Oswald and Marshall Allen On Friday September 9th Oswald performed with fellow alto-saxist Marshall Allen from Sun Ra's Arkestra. Oswald has often stated that Allen has been his primary influence on the sax since the '60's, but this is the first time they ever played together, in a special wind quartet for this Space Music occasion, with trombonists Doug Tielli and Scott Thomson.

| Photo from the Guelph Jazz Festival ... |

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breath-taking Rite of Spring ...

Then, for the opening concert of the New Forms Festival, on Thursday September 15th at the Western Front Lodge in Vancouver, for his first-ever solo piano recital, Oswald presented two sets of his Rascali Klepitoire compositions for Disklavier (an acoustic robot piano), mostly transformations of Bach, including the precise transcriptions he and Ernest Cholakis have made of Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations, and special live cameos by Christopher Butterfield singing Glenn Gould.

As an encore Oswald played spRite, a complete version of Igor Stravinsky's piano transcription for Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) but performed at very fast tempi. As a result it is not always an accurate performance, as it tests the mechanical limits of the piano, but this seems to make it all the more exciting.

Click green Play button below to hear Oswald's superfast Rite of Spring live performance :

|video of latest rendition of spRite|

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JACKO LANTERN &

JACKOSCAN...

Jackoscan was created in 2001 as a soundtrack to compliment Janéad O'Jakriel. It's source is a statement broadcast worldwide by Michael Jackson in 1993. This recitation is used exclusively as the basis for the 22 minute Jackosan.

| Click here to play >>> JACKOSCAN |

The Jacko in John Oswald's chronophotic plasma image Sketches for Jacko Lantern (which he calls 'an electron drawing') is indeed the famous singer, notorious romantic, and face shifter, currently on trial by the American justice system, but already either condemned or sanctified by everyone else. He is represented in Oswald's ever-changing image by his teen and recent visages, combined with his similarly altered and now-almost-equally-disparaged sister, as well as several other iconic faces which may have served as models for the transformation. This hydra construct is mounted on a similarly amorphous body combines photographed, painted and sculpted-marble elements, including references to the iconography of the impaled Saint Sebastian, Michelangelo's David as well as his Dying Slave, and the Venus deMilo. The precursor to Jacko Lantern is Janéad O'Jakriel, another chronophotic which was created for a plasma screen, and first shown at the Hayward Gallery in London England as part of Sonic Boom in 2001. Janéad consists of a gradual transformation of a 1932 photo of a nude man by George Platt-Lynes into a remarkably similar pose by Janet Jackson for a 1993 publicity photo, combined with a filigree of the features of various British rock stars.

But the Janet/Michael resemblances, their transformational appearances, and connections to historic imagery, as well as the graphic quality of Oswald's technique of morphing through varying the transparency of superimposed images, naturally led to further exploration of this hermaphroditic figure. Sketches for Jacko Lantern 2 is an iteration of a work-in-progress.

Oswald's use of the the gender-bending aspect of the Jacko image goes back 15 years to the cover of the first plunderphonic CD, which features MJ transformed into a white woman, a picture that Michael thought was really funny.

| see image >>> wikipedia entry on plunderphonics |

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SPINVOLVER ...

Susanna Hood photographed by John Oswald scratching her own voice on a dubplate

Spinvolver brings to the stage aspects of the recorded medium of plunderphonics through a solo performer who utilizes various technology, including telephonics, turntablism, and other audio media assisted by an offstage technical Wizard of Oswald who feeds the performer verbal lines and modular performance cues from a matrix (a growing catalog of performance routines which are usually initiated by a degree of solicited audience response). In effect the performer is a surrogate to the unseen, offstage operator who during the proceedings gradually relinquishes the role of Svengali to allow the performer greater autonomy. The performer is kinetic, vocal, and the entire visual focus - there is no video component.

Spinvolver is part lecture, part opera, part dance jockey set, part cinema for the ears.

This solo dance opera lecture debuted in 2002 in Berlin, toured various capitols of Europe.

Spinvolver is currently about 45 minutes long.

| view a scene from SPINVOLVER [ Paris 2003 ] |

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GRATEFUL DEAD = GRAYFOLDED

(August 11, 2004 / TORONTO) Oswald's fony label has decided to reissue the critically and popularly acclaimed 2cd Grateful Dead plunderphonic GRAYFOLDED. Out of print since June 2000, the 2004 edition (tenth year anniversary) features exclusive background info and interviews with Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Robert Hunter plus 2 "time maps" which chart the source Dark Stars used and a 10,000 word essay by musicologist Rob Bowman. Gary Lambert, editor of the Grateful Dead Almanac said : "The decade-leaping GRAYFOLDED is an astonishingly accurate evocation of that sublime, hallucinatory 'unstuck in time' feeling one gets at a really good Grateful Dead show."

"This double CD, lasting almost two blissful hours, has been rightly acclaimed as the ultimate Dark Star, the one you always hoped the Dead would one day get around to playing."
- The London Daily Telegraph

"GRAYFOLDED is literally a hundred or so great nights rolled into one extraordinary, extended high... two Cds' worth of gorgeous sonic orgami."
- Rolling Stone, best of the year list

"... An extended time-warped psychedelic jam that is meticulously hallucinatory."
- New York Times, top 10 of the year

"Even casual Dead fans will be floored by this astonishing new project. Absolutely brilliant."
- Toronto Sun, album of the decade

"On GRAYFOLDED (fony) plunderphonics composer John Oswald's 1995 double disc length 'cover' of The Grateful Dead's most spacebound vehicle plundered and spliced together more than four decades of live Dead versions into one definitive, maximalist version. Oswald created orchestras of timewarped Jerry Garcias loosing waterfalls of of lunar notes and feedback patterns that bled into slow smears of vocals and supernaturally compacted jams. The first - straighter - part, "Transitive Axis", relies mostly on overlap techniques, which permit Oswald to fly in various soundboard recordings and patch particularly zoned solos into huge vertically stacked harmonies. [...] Part two, "Mirror Ashes", is considerably more dosed, with swarms of time-altered sound effectively working as huge brackets enveloping ever more compacted takes. It's a fantastically psychedelic listen ..."
- The WIRE (#261 November 2005) from "60 cover versions that rattle the state of song"

| Click Here to purchase GRAYFOLDED at CDBABY.com |

| Read More about GRAYFOLDED...|

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news item

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arc of apparitions • whisperfield

instandstillness (77 minutes, premiered April 18th, 2004 at the Images International Film and Video Festival in Toronto)

(September 1, 2004 / TORONTO) This endless cinematic spectacle features hundreds of Torontonians participating in a literally skin-deep portrayal of a ghostly crowd which goes nowhere and does nothing but is nonetheless always gradually becoming constantly different. Standstill is the third of a series of chronophotic moving stills (Janéad O'Jakriel/Jacko Lantern, the Arc of Apparitions) in which Oswald perfectly blurs the properties and aesthetics of photography, movies, and televisualisation in a counter-Koyaanisqatsi universe.

In 1999 internationally-renowned Canadian composer John Oswald began photographing people. In 2001 he exhibited, in Toronto, Souls, a large photo mural consisting of over 100 of his friends and acquaintances, each photographed individually, gathered into a collaged crowd. In 2002 he began working on Census, amassing a much larger database of strangers and acquaintances for several video-projected images in which the relatively transparency of each individual in relation to the crowd changes very slowly over time. The first manifestation of this is the multifaceted Arc of Apparitions, (starring eighty residents of Ville de Quebec) published on DVD by OHM/Avatar).

The revised instandstillnessence will be shown with other works by Oswald continuously at the Edward Day Gallery in Toronto from September 11th (opening 2-5PM) to October 4th. | Open instandstillnessence postcard... |

| Oswald with 'instandstillnessence' projection... |

| Installation view at Edward Day Gallery ... |

| Oswald performing at Edward Day Gallery... |

| NOW Magazine Review of 'instandstillnessence' ... |

| PETER GODDARD /TORONTO STAR Review of 'instandstillnessence' ... |

( February 17, 2005 / TORONTO ) John Oswald has been awarded for "Best solo exhibition in a private gallery" at the Toronto Untitled Art Awards for "instandstillnessence" at the Edward Day Gallery. The award ceremony was held at the Steamwhistle Brewery Roundhouse on Wednesday February 16th, 2005.

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partial

Cantaloupe Music releases Oswald Remix

(October 11, 2004 / NEW YORK) Cantaloupe Music has just released Messiah ReMix, a collection of takes on George Frideric Handel's classic oratorio, by contemporary plunderphonicticians, including John Oswald, who created a new piece, Partial, based on the Messiah overture, for this release. Oswald recommends that the best way to hear the album is to play Partial (track 11) first followed by track 1, and so on. Partial was meant to be the first track and Oswald doesn't think it works as well at the end.

| preview track here |