IFS Records

Oswald might be more engaged by Moore’s notion of “mutation.” The two tracks on Diamond Seas are constructed from multiple instances of “The Diamond Sea” out on the road, being played live night after night. Side A is Oswald’s layering and sequencing of performances of “The Diamond Sea” from 1995; Side B comprises sounds from versions of the song from 1996. The plunderphonics approach might be an effective vehicle for indexing some of the mutations the song underwent over the first couple years of its life (emphasis on that “might”…).

Diamond Seas recalls Grayfolded (1994), Oswald’s storied plunderphonics version of “Dark Star,” one of the Grateful Dead’s early career launchpads for longform improvisation. The comparison may extend beyond Oswald’s methodology: “psychedelic” and “jam” are frequently used terms in discussions of “The Diamond Sea” and are all but synonymous with the Dead. One wonders about the adequacy of those terms, in either case.

Intro by Jonathan Shaw

Jonathan Shaw: I am finding Diamond Seas a lot more interesting than I thought I might, though most of that interest has been generated by the 1996 side, which departs more intensely from the original song. What are the rest of you hearing and thinking?

Bill Meyer: When it came out, I warmed up to Washing Machine right away, more so that other mid-90s Sonic Youth records, and “The Diamond Sea” had a lot to do with it. As a whole, the album seemed to reconcile SY’s pop and improvisational sides more naturally than anything that came before it, and I equally liked the material from either end of the spectrum. But I also remember skipping the rest of the album and cueing up “The Diamond Sea” on the CD player many times. The very existence of this project suggests that someone in the SY camp sees “The Diamond Sea” as their “Dark Star,” so it makes sense that they’d give it the Grayfolded treatment.

Jennifer Kelly: I know that Lee Ranaldo was a big Dead Head early on, and Thurston has talked about them, too. So it makes sense that they might see parallels between their longer, more improvisational stuff and the Dead’s.

I’m shocked to find that I like Grayfolded LOTS more than Diamond Seas, the reverse of how I feel about the originals. The Sonic Youth mixes have so much chatter and crowd noise and the Dead ones focus almost entirely on the music. Also, the more you like something, the less you want it fucked with. Could be that.

I’ve been looking for articles/interviews about Oswald’s process and not finding any. Anybody know any good ones?

Bill Meyer: First of all, here is a link to some fairly old interviews with Oswald on his plunderphonics site. He was an early practitioner of what one might characterize as skeptical, critical sampling. He has also been a free improviser, playing saxophone.

Jonathan Shaw: Like Bill, I really like Washing Machine, but more for the spikier songs on it: “Junkie’s Promise,” the title track, “Becuz.” I can lock in on “The Diamond Sea” sometimes, but I would rather listen to “Expressway to Yr Skull” for that extended SY thing. Might be why I respond to the 1996 side of Diamond Seas as strongly as I do. The defamiliarizing and the way crowd sounds and the long periods of aggro amp abuse dig into the structure of the original tune reveal a different experience.

For me the overlaps between this record and Grayfolded feel right because I was going to Dead shows at the same time that I was tuning in to Sister and checking out SY live. Unfortunately, even in 1987, which a lot of Heads are fond of, the Dead were pretty brittle as a live act. The SY shows I saw were musically thrilling, the Dead shows were primarily a social environment.

So I am having the inverse experience from Jenny’s. Grayfolded is interesting, but Diamond Seas — especially that second side — lights me up musically.

Jennifer Kelly: Thanks, I did read that one, but I was more interested in how it works. Like are the different samples of the same thing arranged sequentially or do they overlap? Could you have the bass from one show and the drums from another at the same time?

I guess I see the point of making sound collages from multiple sources (it’s another way of composing with prerecorded notes instead of instruments) but not so much of the same song.

I gather that the respective bands commissioned both of these projects?

Bill Meyer: Regarding Grayfolded, I can easily imagine it appealing even if you aren’t a Deadhead. “Dark Star” is very much its own thing. What Oswald did with it is pretty different from what he did to “The Diamond Sea,” and the outcomes are correspondingly different.

Grayfolded is like a stretch version of “Dark Star” that does not mess with its essential structure. The tune’s landmarks happen in roughly the same spots as when the Dead played the song, it just takes a lot longer to get there. However, I think that Oswald had access to every “Dark Star” recording in the Dead’s archive, so he could jump between years and versions of the band with every edit. Each side of Diamond Seas is drawn from one year, but neither side retains the tune’s original structure. Instead, they’re like three-dimensional sculptures made out of pieces of a given year’s “The Diamond Sea.”

Oswald did plunderphonics first under his own steam. I think that commissions came after he got cool because he got into predictable trouble for appropriating copywritten material, but doing something recognizable artistic with it.

Jonathan Shaw: I don’t get the sense that individual instruments from individual performances were isolated and then sequenced alongside one another. In the case of Diamond Seas, for sure there are instances in which multiple performances are layered. I really like the density of those moments.

My sense of Grayfolded is that Bill is largely right about the stretched nature of the thing, especially if the Spring 1969 versions of “Dark Star” are considered the foundational texts of the song. There are some later “Dark Stars” that dispense with the intro and outro verses entirely and only briefly engage the key melody. Interesting to think of “Dark Star” having “landmarks,” a cognitive map of the song to hang on to while the Dead drifted and cooked and audiences did their thing too.

Christian Carey: John Oswald certainly treats it as something as durable as “Dark Star.”

Bill Meyer: My impression is that Diamond Seas is made from bigger and smaller pieces of performances. Occasionally a structure is emulated for a spell, as when the lyrics are laid out in the original sequence on the 1995 piece, but each line sounds like it comes a different version recorded in a different theater. But especially on the 1996 version there’ll be a recognizable fragment mixed into the foreground with two or three chunks of chronologically unrelated noise deployed around it. It’s more of a collage made out of Diamond Seas than a stretch limo edition.

Jonathan Shaw: I think the least effective portion of Diamond Seas is in the 1995 side, when Oswald splices together Moore’s vocals in the song’s first verse. A travelogue of sorts, from room to room and performance to performance. But sonically it doesn’t work. Maybe the less he attempts to follow the song’s logics, the more interesting ideas he has.

On the other hand, I like all the stage banter he puts in. SY’s personality and name-dropping tendencies are trackable. No particular shade, there. They knew lots of interesting people.

Ian Mathers: Well, as our resident Sonic Youth... let’s say “skeptic,” first I had to go back and listen to the original “The Diamond Sea” (it’s possible I played it a few times ago years ago, when I kept listening to different SY albums hoping I’d start loving them like I expected to, but I retained little if anything about the experience). One of my big roadblocks with the band is my visceral dislike of Moore’s singing/vocals, so the very beginning didn’t do much for me. But once the whole thing spins off... I may have heard very little Grateful Dead in my life so far, but I was raised by a man who loved the Allman Brothers Band and Neil Young, and safe to say “The Diamond Sea” instantly vaulted onto my short list of good SY tracks by virtue of sounding a bit like some of the latter more extended live explorations.

So it’s maybe not surprising that I agree with Jonathan that the noisier, denser 1996 side of Diamond Seas is my favorite. And I even like the aggressiveness of how the crowd noise is mixed in mid-track on both sides, although fitting with what Jenny said, I am pretty open to Oswald messing with the track a lot.

I’m not super familiar with Oswald’s efforts, and still have to listen to Grayfolded (which I’ve been intrigued by since reading the Rolling Stone review of it back in the day). I’ve also just realized the Bandcamp edition of it appears slightly different than all the other ones I’ve seen? It’s even got version notes!

Christian Carey: The question always for me with Oswald’s work is intention. Is plundering meant to take a celebratory, intellectual, ironic, or destructive stance? What value does he impart to the material? I find the use of spoken word to be a clue that this is a celebratory project. What do you all think?

Jennifer Kelly: And one that Sonic Youth commissioned. Maybe that’s why I found the crowd noise self-serving.

Bill Meyer: Yeah, this was commissioned, and while I have not heard all of Oswald’s commissions, I am not aware of him biting the hand that feeds him.

Bryon Hayes: My belief is that Oswald originally meant sonic plundering as a means of questioning what a musical instrument is, what constitutes a composition and the ownership over it, and so on. He writes about it in his paper“Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative” from 1985. As Bill said earlier, bands started commissioning him to plunder their works, as he became sort of a “cool” transgressor of copyright laws, I guess. So his intentions have likely shifted over time, as well as his M.O.

This particular record is kind of a walk down memory lane for me, as Sonic Youth soundtracked my high school years and if the Detroit shows from 1995 are included in the mix, then I was there (getting kicked in the head by a stage diver during the Washing Machine show at State Theater). I remember when that album came out, thinking that Sonic Youth finally made a “pretty” song with “The Diamond Sea,” wrestling with it. I preferred their noisier side, so I thought that it was a tip of the hat to the fans of their earlier material that they made the song so long and jammy.

I am really enjoying this release, and the nostalgia factor amplifies my enjoyment even more!!

Jennifer Kelly: I’m puzzled about intent, too, though. I’m not sure what this adds to what we know about the song or Sonic Youth.

Bryon Hayes: And to your point, Jenny, reading Oswald’s paper leads me to a question: is this a Sonic Youth record, or a John Oswald record, or both?

Jennifer Kelly: I feel like the multi-source plunderphonics records — like DJ Shadow’s Entroducing and Avalanches and Jason Forrest’s stuff — do make something new out of their material. I’m not sure this does. Though I also have some nostalgia for Sonic Youth live, it was mostly the music, not the interstitial banter.

Both of these records are conceptually interesting, but I wouldn’t run out and buy either one.

Bill Meyer: I suspect Oswald would prefer to muddy the waters of authorship and ownership.

Jonathan Shaw: Great questions from Christian and Byron. Diamond Seas seem clearly to be an Oswald record to me. That may explain some of the disappointment and discomfiture among SY superfans.

My intellectual training has made questions of intent hard for me to think effectively. I am more interested in what can be heard and interpreted — not saying that’s the right way to see things, but the post-structuralism can do a long-term number on you if you read a lot of it in your 20s. Inasmuch as I understand the “plunder,” I like the usage. Pirates plunder stuff, and exert a measure of control over it, but that’s not ownership, as Bill notes. Rather it moves the material into an unregulated zone. Sam Delany argued in his SF books of the mid-70s that those sorts of sites, of free investigation and play, are especially crucial for innovation.

Christian Carey: Is it a Sonic Youth or a John Oswald record is a great question. If you were looking for it at Princeton Record Exchange, they would certainly file it under Sonic Youth.

Mason Jones: It’s taken me some time to listen and think about this, and I’m still unsure what my take is. I appreciate Oswald’s ideas, but somehow, I don’t feel that this is a successful application of them. Ultimately, I’m left wondering what this adds, and what purpose it serves. Perhaps comparing it to Grayfolded is too simple, but that work took the original and expanded it while to my ears staying within the same philosophical approach, and as a result it became a larger, more extended version that was in some ways “more” than the original. While I’m very much not a Deadhead, I can still appreciate what Oswald accomplished, and I think Dead fans can find in it something new yet connected.

In the case of Diamond Seas, I’m not feeling that. I know the original song well, and heard it played live at least once or twice. For me, this release doesn’t add to it, but simply swaps parts in an approach that feels both too easy conceptually and too lightweight compositionally. I don’t find any reason why I might prefer to listen to this rather than the original song, since I don’t find “more” or really anything very different. It comes across as clever trickery in search of aesthetics, rather than something aesthetically pleasing with elements of cleverness.

Jonathan Shaw: Mason’s and Jenny’s criticisms of Diamond Seas are well put, but they assume that “The Diamond Sea” is the principal aesthetic object or text against which Oswald’s record should be judged. I don’t, so I am not hoping to “find more” or “learn something new” about SY. I love that big, dissonant middle section of the 1996 side. The layering and sequencing gets me somewhere.

I know a bunch of “Dark Stars” very, very well, and for the best of them, I prize them in their individual instances as the particular things they are. That might also contribute to why I don’t respond as strongly to Grayfolded as a musical experience. In that case, I’d rather listen to one of the “Dark Stars,” situated in a specific show from 1969 or 1970 or 1972.

Bill Meyer: I appreciate your first point, Jonathan. 40-odd years after I first heard them, I don’t feel like I need to learn anything about Sonic Youth. I just want to hear their best sounds. I will echo the appreciation for the 1996 side because it’s less concerned with the structure of the song and more concerned with collaging hunks of noise.

Ian Mathers: Relistening to Diamond Seas again last night, the difference for me between the two sides is getting pretty stark (and in ways that are maybe in line with some of the discussion here). I equally feel like I don’t need to learn anything about SY, from the other direction. It felt like I was sitting through “Diamond Seas 1995,” although it passed quickly enough. I don’t have much nostalgia here (my high school engagement with the band was trying to get through all of Daydream Nation instead of just playing “Teen Age Riot” again), like Jenny I don’t get much out of the crowd noise, and it just feels like a lackluster version of what’s going on with “Diamond Seas 1996.” If they’d released the latter as a one-off, I’d be more into it.

I do appreciate that Oswald appears to be something less straightforward here than, say, this compilation of 11 versions of the Stooges’ “Dirt” from the Fun House played at the same time.

And yet, I ultimately have more fun listening to “Dddddiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrtttttttt,” and I suspect that’s not down to just preferring the source material. Something about randomness versus conscious shaping, maybe? I did a quick look to see if Oswald has done any interviews around his work here and didn’t turn up anything, but did find out that 1996 was the last year they ever played “The Diamond Sea live. Here I had been assuming Oswald/the band had just picked a couple of prime years for its live incarnation, instead of the last. Correctly or not, that feels connected to either the performances from 1996 or how Oswald has piled them on.

I also see that at least a good chunk of the vocal SY fans on reddit do not like this album. “Unlistenable” has been thrown around, which feels funny when if anything I wish “Diamond Seas 1996” took things even further into noise.

Justin Cober-Lake: I’m sort of in the middle of opinions on this work. I don’t see why SY fans would find it “unlistenable” — it seems to work for me in a lot of the same ways that Sonic Youth works (and while I’m a longtime fan, this track isn’t one I’ve returned to regularly). I feel a little bit like Mason does in wondering why I would go for this version rather than the original, even if there’s something interesting about it. In that sense, the conversation makes me think that there are multiple ways of approaching this record, which, in my own listening, sometimes come together and sometimes don’t:

1) Is it a good/enjoyable piece of music? Yes, especially 1996 for the reasons that everyone (here and elsewhere) is hearing. Devoid of context, I kind of like it, even if “devoid of context” is an unreachable state.

2) Is it good as a theoretical/aesthetic/compositional/whatever project? I don’t have a strong opinion here, having not taken a dive into Oswald’s whole thing not spent proper time with Grayfolded or other plunderphonic works. I can see how someone else might want to nerd out on it, though, in probably fruitful ways.

3) Does it add to my understanding of or thinking about Sonic Youth or “The Diamond Sea?” For me, it’s a no. It is certainly much better that the “Dirt” thing Ian mentioned, partly just by being a more sincere look at the music. Like Ian, I wish the original went further into noise, too, but there’s SY that does that. This feels a little bit like play to me, and I have no objection to that, but I’m not likely to reach for this over the original and, having listened to it a few times, I haven’t really been compelled to push more into, and I probably wouldn’t even have reached for the original again had it not been for this conversation. Even so, I like that it exists, because the idea at least is provocative, even if this particular release leaves me a little uninspired.

Bill Meyer: As far as context is concerned, I think that Diamond Seas can be seen as part of a long-term project to keep SY alive in people’s minds a decade and a half after the band packed it in. Like many other long in the tooth / retired artists (Can, Wire, Neil Young, the Grateful Dead), they have released a stream of archival live material. They even relented and put out an official version of Walls Have Ears, which was conspicuous by its absence, a couple years ago. This might seem to them like a more creative way of nurturing their commercial presence than another live album.

Michael Rosenstein: I’m curious as to what, if any, connections Oswald sees between his plunderphonics projects and his alto sax playing in improvised settings. Oddly, while I’ve heard Oswald as an improviser, I’ve not heard any of his plunderphonics. I have zero interest in Grayfolded. I listened to and saw the Dead a bunch in the early to mid 1970s. But after seeing Pharoah Sanders live in 1973, I increasingly lost interest in the Dead’s noodling. And I only saw Sonic Youth once, shortly before their breakup and have barely listened to any of their records. But I’ve been listening to Oswald as an improviser since the early 1980s. I think I first came across his playing on Moose and Salmon, his trio with Henry Kaiser and Toshinori Kondo.

I also got a chance to see him with CCMC, the Toronto-based collective including Michael Snow and Paul Dutton, as well as in a duo with pianist Paul Plimley. Taking a quick look at Oswald’s Discogs page, it appears that he still occasionally plays in improv settings. From what I know about his plunderphonics projects, I don’t hear any of those strategies coming through in any of these improvised settings, but I may be missing something.