Disjointed

A few years after making the following "mystery tape" in 1980 John Oswald would justify it under the name "Plunderphonics", an early intellectualisation of sampling. I downloaded the songs one by one from an article about him on UBU after he was name dropped in an interview by the extremely inferior mash-up snoozefest Girl Talk and I was amazed at how ahead of their time they were as well as how much I actually enjoyed them as quasi-songs. The analogue techniques make the sampling enjoyably unpredictable and the 80s source material makes the tape more to my taste than most of John Oswald's recent stuff.

Not easy listening at all but very good if you're in the right mood, and its more of a laugh than the Kaiser Chiefs. High praise indeed.

"Kissing Jesus in the Dark" by John Oswald

This great album released in 2002 by Max Tundra also mixes mindfuckery with a real pop sensibility, and in a particularly successful and original way. A hell of a lot more actual songwriting has gone into this than Oswald's tape and that definitely helps it in terms of accessibility, even if it's still threatening or downright spastic from some angles.

Max Tundra has also just released his third album "Parallax Error Beheads You" on Domino Records, which is slightly more polished but still very good.

"Mastered by Guy at the Exchange" by Max Tundra

This new signing to Warp Records has been around for at least two years now but hasn't got any full releases out that I'm aware of, only a few mixtapes and live radio sessions floating around in internet buzz. A 6-track EP is due to be released by Warp on the 19th of this month, but they've already released two of those on Bleep because they're so excited. I haven't even told you who it is yet! Hudson Mohawke. He follows on a bit from the last two records in this post but is also very influenced by hip-hop in the same way that people like Flying Lotus and Prefuse 73 are. I like his style a lot and here are some of my favourite tracks of his which I have found so far.

A few tracks by Hudson Mohawke