People Like Us, or Vicky Bennet, has been a media artist since 1990/1991, but it wasn’t something she considered doing in the first place. She studied Fine Arts in Brighton in the 80s, and a course like this was pretty rare because you could work with time-based media. She started using Hifi that she would find at home, and by that time, sampling was pretty regular considering the dance and hip hop culture was taking place simultaneously. She had with her:
- a double cassette tape
- a mixer
- Tv set
- VHS video player
- Radio tuner
She started doing mixtapes and sharing them with other people because everyone was doing them back then. There was no commercial purposes, only fun. The first outlet was radio, however. After submitting one of her tapes, festival Radio (Brighton) gave her a show. She later started working in a Sussex radio called Southern Counties Radio. She made radio shows out of the radio – “I would use my double cassette tape and record the radio the whole day without listening And when once I had a pile of tape, so I go through them and start making bits out of them and little radio pieces”. From this came out the piece Millennium Dome.
Reusing ideas is the core of her work which resonates a lot with the musical genre plunderphonics. It’s a genre developed and conceptualised by the Canadian John Oswald. I set myself to listen to the most relevant plunderphonic albums ever made, ending up with more than 60 albums.
In his essay Plunderphonics or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative, John Oswald refers to the Experimental compositional technique of utilising and manipulating pre-existing audio sources to create a new composition like Sound Collage. The only difference between Sound Collage and Plunderphonics is the sample recognition, whereas, in the latter, it is intended to be recognised by the listener.
John Oswald describes the practice by pointing to the digital sampler as the composition vehicle compared to the traditional method. In contrast, the piano is the centre of the piece. Ex.: Hip Hop’s composition vehicle is vinyl scratching and vinyl sampling. However, music containing samples and sample-based plunderphonics is still in radically different fields. Plunderphonics is driven almost entirely by the sonic desires of the composer, using the samples as an instrument, as opposed to using them as an added extra.
Another theme discussed in the essay is whether using these samples can be considered stealing or not. He justifies it wrong by mentioning the many times rock bands would copy other bands’ sounds and finishes with a Stravinsky quote: “A good composer does not imitate; he steals”.
Ex.: James Tenney’s Collage #1 (Blue Suede) is a Tape Music manipulation of Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes”.
“Blue Suede Shoes” was borrowed from Carl Perkins, who composed it originally.
I am still listening to plunderphonic records by this day, but I’ve narrowed down the list for those who are interested in the genre:
- The Avalanches – Since I Left You (2000)
- John Oswald – Plexure (1993)
- Panda Bear – Person Pitch (2007)
- The Rockwood Escape Plan – Dreamcast Summer Songs (2009)
- Ground Zero – Revolutionary Pekinese Opera (1996)
- father2006 – White Death (2015)
- Oneohtrix Point Never – R Plus Seven (2013)
- The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2001)
- Stock, Hausen & Walkman – Giving up With Stock, Hausen & Walkman (1993)
- Ahnnu – World Music (2013)
- YES USB – NO USB (2012)