The practice of reassembling existing media (often popular) to create new material (often dense and experimental) has recently fallen under the catch-all name "Plunderphonics." Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Plunderphonics is an American art form. This is not to denigrate the incredible contributions of Canadian John Oswald, who not only coined the term, but whose music is the most lucid regarding fair-use and pop culture. Nor would I intend to belittle the French Musique Concrete innovators, who, in the beginning of the 1950s, took a critical look at both recording technology and the value of everyday sounds. The issue is that North American culture, and its popular music, is unique in its homogenization of a wide array of different cultures.
Take a piece like Charles Ives' "Central Park in the Dark", a perfect example. Composed between 1898 and 1907, it not only borrows from the popular songs and idioms of the time, it distorts, twists, and overlaps recognizable themes. The ensuing dissonance arising from an almost lulling string ostinato comes as a shock. Ives' goal, however, was a bit nobler than merely jarring his listeners; he just wanted to convey the sounds of a specific location, and that popular music was simply in the air. John Oswald later picked up on this notion, and with a sharp ear.
Then there's Carl Stalling, responsible for the soundtracks to Warner Brothers' golden age cartoons. Stalling's work was a jumble of classical themes-- often Wagner and Debussy-- showtunes, and popular standards (he favored the work of the consistently inventive Raymond Scott). Perhaps due to its delicate connection to the cartoons themselves, Stalling's work became a token example in any discussion of the connection between the visual and the aural. Composer/improviser/label-owner John Zorn has noted this plenty of times, and Stalling's influence on his approach to the interplay between genre, personal relationships and recorded music is consistently apparent in his work, with examples dating back to the late 70s.
Also from the late 70s, The Residents' Third Reich and Roll is a full album of popular hits from the 60s and 70s mangled into... whatever kind of sound The Residents manage to make: Plunderphonic gurus Negativland once nicely summed The Residents' contribution to their Escape from Noise album as "hoots and clanks." Their intentions are clear from the start: to emphasize just how analogous fascism is to autonomous, icon-laden popular music. To arrive at this slant, The Residents-- who have yet to disclose their identities-- had to have placed an enormous amount of value on folk culture and its traditions. Folk culture somehow mutated into popular culture, which is possibly the most identifying aspect of America.
Popular music as we know it has become all encompassing, not just a reaction to the aforementioned issues, but also one of them. We have self-martyring artistes retaliating against censorship, against intangible, intellectual freedoms. Even by the time Plunderphonics' John Oswald came along, content was no longer an issue; what was relevant was the fact that you couldn't escape popular culture, even if you wanted to. Sound overflows in every aspect of our lives, containing advertisement and indoctrination: invisible, inaudible, and inescapable radio waves are constantly buzzing around our heads, all waiting to be channeled.
Oswald's personality isn't absent from the work, but he seems to take a degree of pleasure trying to remove his ego, by focusing so fixedly on other people's material. Wobbly, on the other hand, is attempting to put himself into the world, and watch it work around him: Wild Why is an album made up completely of hip-hop radio broadcasts. It is still, at a fundamental level, about being inundated with popular culture, but rather than feeling claustrophobic or upset by it, Wobbly embraces and aestheticizes it. Wild Why's occasional exercises in rhythm, use of accessible, modern day hip-hop delineates him from Oswald's released work to this point, but perhaps not as much from his labelmates at Illegal Art, like Girl Talk or Steev Hise, or those at Tigerbeat6, like the much-praised Kid606.
Given the deconstructive history of Plunderphonics, aestheticization is a seemingly bizarre phenomenon, and Wild Why is in many ways a critical statement. Yes, it covers the strange way certain ideas and phrases saturate a musical culture with the collage of seventy or so "yo's" that greet the listener on the second track, but what's more striking is how Wobbly is simultaneously a product of this culture.
Aside from its function as passing entertainment, Wobbly's album lacks the strength of the more theoretical thinkers that preceded him, and it seems obvious he wants to contend with that sphere. Emphasizing American culture's unconscious repetition and recycling of ideas is no longer poignant; that practice has been thoroughly appropriated by the culture it spoofs (look at the MTV Video Music Awards). The blatant sexuality, and issues of race and violence in hip-hop music have been duly noted, from within the genre itself. Though the painstaking time and effort that went into this release are truly commendable, at a fundamental level, Wild Why only asks that quintessential American question, "Can I be famous?" Perhaps, as far as Tigerbeat6 goes, Wobbly just wants to be famous on the collegekid circuit, but what kind of cultural statement is that?
