Detritus:Rhizome: Audio

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Audio
Audio sampling has become increasingly widespread over recent years, leaking into pop music via "electronica" and hip hop. This list will not attempt to mention everyone who uses the technique, only those who have been pioneers or self-conciously and intentionally pushing the envelope of audio appropriation. This page lists only the very cream of the crop (in our opinion). For information on others who deserve mention but arent neccesarily "required listening", we have some reviews.

Have a link or reference to suggest? (add something new, or if you think you can describe something better than how it is done here, write a new blurb and send it in.)

Negativland Web Site: The copyright-bustin' media-tweakin' band from Contra Costa County... See here for a very interesting interview on KPFA with the group's Don Joyce and other copyright "experts".
The Tape-beatles/Public Works: Iowa-based group which builds their music exclusively from other music, first with traditional tape-cutup methods and now, as Public Works, using digital techniques. Highly recommended.
John Oswald: The inventor of Plunderphonics. Absolutely excellent work. His banned CD, Plunderphonic, is featured in our archives.
Sucking Chest Wound: Canadian Industrial/Sampling group whose music tears huge huge gaping holes in late-capitalist society.
People Liks Us: Excellent audio and video collage from the UK.
Stock, Hausen, and Walkman: British group that makes particularly twisted sample-based music.
Barbed: English group that crafts eerie soundscapes and quirky mechanical beats from samples.
The Evolution Control Committee: Sampler-based group from Ohio. An excellent example track is the 1995 single "Rebel Without a Pause (Whipped Cream mix)", a juxtaposition of Public Enemy and Herb Alpert.
Carl Stone: Amazing sample-based compositions, subtle, abstract but filled with fascinating shards of found sound.
Otomo Yoshihide: Noisy turntabalist and sampler artist from Tokyo, also has band Ground Zero and has collaborated with numerous others including Bob Ostertag, Carl Stone, and Jon Rose. Pay particular attention to his CD on Extreme, Night Before the Death of the Sampling Virus. His CD with Carl Stone, Monogatari: Amino Argot, is also excellent, being the result of repeated long-distance collaboration, mailing DAT tapes back and forth.
Chumbawamba: This band is great for many reasons, including that they've run afoul of copyright law at least 2 times. Most recently, the North American version of their latest album, "Tubthumping", had to have its liner notes abridged. In place of the offending sections, which were quotes that couldn'tcouldn't be cleared, is a message to check their website for the original text. This is great that they've made it available via the web. But i'm still furious at U.S. libel lawyers who threatened them. It doesn't feel very good to be a citizen of this country, supposedly so free and open, where i can't read the same album liner notes that someone can in Europe. Ridiculous!
Public Enemy: Legends of hiphop, masters of the sampler.
Christian Marclay: Downtown New York turntable improviser and collage artist. A turntablist who does not come from the hip-hop tradition but from the avant-garde.
Bob Ostertag: Continually pushes the envelope of sample-based composition to new extremes. Collaborates with a variety of other composers and improvisors such as Otomo Yoshihide, John Zorn, Mike Patton, and Fred Frith.
Pop Will Eat Itself: British industrial/techno/dance/rap band that uses an incredible amount of sampling, and virtually evangelizes this practice in their lyrics (and name).
The KLF: Also known as the Timelords, The Jamms (Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu) and most recently, K2. KLF stands for "Kopyright Liberation Front". A British pop-dance band that plays the media like an instrument, they consist of Jim Cauty and Bill Drummond, savvy music-industry manipulators who are masters of the press release and the contrived news event. Their first album, "1987: What the Fuck's Going On?" Was destroyed in a legal settlement with Abba, who's "Dancing Queen" was sampled without clearance. (Now available in our archives.) The KLF are also authors of an excellent book entitled "The Manual: How to Get a #1 Hit the Easy Way," a sarcastic yet strangely Zen look at the pop music establishment.
Amon Tobin, Bricollage and Permutation: Tobin uses an amazing barrage of instrumental samples to construct a techno/dance-oriented sound, ranging from extremely mellow, jazzy trip hop to intense rapidfire drum and bass.
Nurse With Wound: Legend of Dada sound.

Have a link or reference to suggest? (add something new, or if you think you can describe something better than how it is done here, write a new blurb and send it in.)

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a
period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our
permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give
a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We
wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
		- Woody Guthrie songbook, c. late-1930s

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