John Oswald

The thing about John Oswald’s music that has always impressed me is that it is, quite simply, masterful. The sheer completeness of his individual works is something quite startling in and of itself: nothing, in my opinion, could possibly be subtracted or added. If you were to ask me about the "plundered” elements that form the music on this CD, I would say: thunder, the sound of water, single notes out of a piano, ambient drones, whispers and you’d roll your eyes when the new age warning buzzer would instantly go off. Nothing could be further from the truth. The two pieces on this CD total over an hour and they contain all the mystery, power and sheer craft of the very best orchestral classical music I have heard. It was a curious impression, considering the fact that I was listening to a sampled work, but one that kept recurring. My attention was not only kept, but I was as intent on hearing the next event as I would be in reading the next page of an amazing novel. The experience was very much the same. Some of the best plunderphonia to date, from the master himself.