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Plunderphonics is a music genre in which tracks are constructed by sampling recognizable musical works. The term was Neologism by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative", and eventually explicitly defined in the liner notes of his Grayfolded album. Plunderphonics is a form of sound collage. Oswald has described it as a referential and self-conscious practice which interrogates notions of originality and identity.
Although the concept of plunderphonics is broad, in practice there are many common themes used in what is normally called plunderphonic music. This includes heavy sampling of of the 1950s, news reports, radio shows, or anything with trained vocal . Oswald's contributions to this genre rarely used these materials, the exception being his Rapping-like 1975 track "Power", which combined a Led Zeppelin instrumental with a sermon of a Southern US evangelist.
The process of sampling other sources is found in various (notably hip-hop and especially turntablism), but in plunderphonic works, the sampled material is often the only sound used. These samples are usually uncleared and sometimes result in legal action being taken due to copyright infringement. Some plunderphonic use their work to protest what they consider to be overly restrictive copyright laws. Many plunderphonic artists claim their use of other artists' materials falls under the fair use doctrine.
Development of the process is when creative musicians plunder an original track and overlay new material and sounds on top until the original piece is masked and then removed, though often using scales and beats. It is a studio-based technique used by such groups as the American experimental band the Residents (who used Beatles tracks), and other noted exponents including DJ Shadow, 808 State and the Avalanches.
According to Chris Cutler, "It wasn't until 1961 that an unequivocal exposition of plunderphonic techniques arrived in James Tenney's celebrated Collage No. 1 ('Blue Suede'), a manipulation of Elvis Presley's hit record 'Blue Suede Shoes'. The gauntlet was down; Tenney had picked up a 'non art', lowbrow work and turned it into 'art'; not as with scored music by writing variations on a popular air, but simply by subjecting a gramophone record to various physical and electrical procedures."Cutler, Chris. (1994) 2004. “Plunderphonia.” Musicworks 60 (Fall): 6–19. Reprinted in Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, edited by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner, 138–56. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. According to Oswald, "the difference with 'Blue Suede' is how it audaciously used a very recognizable existing recording of another musical work. This blatant appropriation pioneered the discovery, for myself and many others, of an ocean of sampling and plunderphonics in following decades."Wannamaker, Robert. 2021. The Music of James Tenney, Volume 1: Contexts and Paradigms, University of Illinois Press. 40–41.
The Residents' "Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life" consists of excerpts from Beatles records. Various Nightclub DJs in the 1970s re-edited the records they played, and although this often consisted of nothing more than extending the record by adding a Refrain or two, this too could be considered a form of plunderphonics.
Some classical have performed a kind of plunderphonia on Musical notation, rather than recorded, music. Perhaps the best-known example is the third movement of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, in which multiple quotations from the music of other composers are superimposed on a complete performance of the second movement from Gustav Mahler second symphony. Alfred Schnittke and Mauricio Kagel have also made extensive use of earlier composers' works. Earlier composers who often plundered the music of others include Charles Ives (who often quoted folk music and in his works) and Ferruccio Busoni (a movement from his 1909 piano suite An die Jugend includes a prelude and a fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach played simultaneously). During the '90s Oswald composed many such scores for classical musicians which he classified with the term Rascali Klepitoire.
In France, Jean-Jacques Birgé has been working on "radiophonies" since 1974 (for his film "La Nuit du Phoque"), capturing radio and editing the samples in real-time with the pause button of a radio-cassette. His group Un Drame Musical Instantané recorded "Crimes parfaits" on LP "A travail égal salaire égal" in 1981, explaining the whole process in the piece itself and calling it "social soundscape". He applied the same technique to TV in 1986 on the "Qui vive?" CD and published on the 1998 CD "Machiavel" with Antoine Schmitt, an interactive video scratch using 111 very small loops from his own past LPs.
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Taking Sampling 50 Times Beyond the Accepted: an interview with John Oswald, Part 2, by Norman Igma. Musicworks # 48
Oswald was subsequently approached by Phil Lesh to use Grateful Dead material on what became the album Grayfolded
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Plunderphonics 69/96
/ref> is a compilation of Oswald's work, from 1969 to 1996, including tracks from the original plunderphonic CD.
DJ Shadow has often been referred to as a pivotal figure in plunderphonics starting with his 1996 album Endtroducing....., with his work being seminally used by later proponents.
Other notable DJs include Mr Scruff (Andy Carthy). His hit "Get a Move On!", from his 1999 album Keep It Unreal, is built around "Bird's Lament (In Memory of Charlie Parker)" by Moondog and has been used in several commercials, ranging from Lincoln and Volvo automobiles to France Télécom and GEICO insurance. The song also sampled vocals from T-Bone Walker's "Hypin' Woman Blues", and contains samples of the song "That's the Blues" by Rubberlegs Williams.
The Avalanches have also been referred to as seminal artists in the genre, in particular with their album Since I Left You, released in 2000, which has been noted as an important pivotal work.
Both Philip Sherburne writing for Rhapsody and Joseph Krol, writing in Varsity, said that Endtroducing..... and Since I Left You were the two most important plunderphonics albums, with Krol also including J Dilla's Donuts which followed in 2006.
In 1992, French noise rock band Paneuropean Architecture released the album Toi Jeune!, referring to John Oswald's work. The album was reissued in 2006 and titled "plundernoize".
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