John Wall (electronic composer)

John Wall (born 1950) is an autodidact electronic composer whose contribution to the field is widely noted by critics of new music. His work has moved from early plunderphonic compositions – where he brought together unlikely combinations of musical genres to create fantastical new works – to large scale works composed of thousands of tiny fragments which create the impression of virtual orchestras. Critics have remarked on "his extraordinary feeling for musical narrative" which is achieved through a working method that has been described as "phenomenally painstaking". According to one critic, Wall's "releases sound like the most finely crafted audio sculptures, somewhere between the contemporary composition of Lachenmann and the experiments of early laptop musicians of the mid 90s."

At the age of 40 Wall acquired a Casio FZ-1 – a mono sampler with very little memory – and used this in conjunction with an 8-track reel-to-reel tape recorder to make his first plunderphoninc works, which he released as Fear of Gravity on his own Utterpsalm imprint.Fear of Gravity uses long, often identifiable samples from other people's works as well as looping and repetition – all features which would quickly disappear from his work.

The purchase of a computer in 1994 (an Atari running Cubase) led to the release of Alterstill in 1995. Again Alterstill drew on material sampled from CDs by artists across a range of contrasting genres but critics were impressed with "the sheer ambition of the project" and Wall has said that the CD is "the first thing that represents what I was capable of doing artistically."

Writing about Alterstill, The Wire editor, Tony Herrington, described how Wall recontextualises sampled materials "to essay complex aural fictions, conjure vivid, large-cast phantasias, broker impossible (or at least unlikely) conferences and 'collaborations' (…) The tracks on Alterstill conjure moods and atmospheres that are predicated on the knowledge that they will be quickly shattered by an incoming musical event; a minimalist mantra of riffing violins punctuated by operatic whoops and hollers; then suddenly, images of a death metal concert with a free jazz saxophone bleeding in from the wings; a soundfield of unfathomable scrapes and drones, which is punctuated by a brass fanfare and maybe the sound of running water." For Herrington, the compositions on Alterstill are "episodic, linear, but all the drama occurs in the horizontal, non-linear pile-up of multiple sound files; the layering and recontextualising of disparate sensations and experiences into a vivid hyperreality."

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