Sunday, May 3, 2009

BOB OSTERTAG-SOONER OR LATER, LP, 1991, USA




Sooner Or Later begins as a very rigorous bit of political art. Composed by this early proponent of plunderphonic and sampladelic praxis (now better known for his journalism that appears on sources like The Huffington Post), The A side begins by grabbing hold of a brief sample of a Salvadoran child burying his father after being murdered by The National Guard, burrowing inside of and plastically reconfiguring this extremely spare and very disturbing sound source over the A side in myriad ways. If this were the sum total of what was transpiring here, it might not have triggered my desire to share this promptly, but the B side is trafficing in something else entirely. Here, Ostertag teases out a glorious haloing harmonic cloud of drone guitar bliss sourced from 20 seconds of a Fred Frith improv that sounds like nothing so much as the dreamily arcadian and acid glazed early era of Matthew Bower's work under the Hototogisu moniker, with the child sample re-appearing as a ghost on the periphery at around the two thirds mark.

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6 comments:

blamo said...

Bob has actually posted just about all of his albums (including this one) on his own site:

http://bobostertag.com/music-recordings.htm

Now that's a good attitude.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but Eric's rips are at 256; Bob's are only 192. Kind of ironic.

Anonymous said...

Bob is my teacher at UC Davis, i got to watch a performance a few weeks ago, it was great, i think he recorded it, i can probably get a copy of it if you are interested just email me Jersupereq@gmail.com

chemicals in the mail said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ochihatou said...

This is an excellent post, and the first track is quite exceptional as well-- borrowing from Steve Reich ("Come Out" etc), it carries an uncomfortable weight, but nonetheless asks us to experience the transformations of that weight, that grief, that suffering...

blamo said...

192 is better than nothing...