Sprut is the name Italian composer Giustino Di Gregorio adopted for the early plunderphonics position the Italian ‘cut and sew’ tradition has documented from 1995 onward. The position is mainly based in Teramo and San Nicolò a Tordino in the Abruzzo region of Italy, where Di Gregorio operates the own Goodbye Boozy Records imprint. The position has sustained continuously across the 30-year career, with the document being the expanded 1999 Tzadik Records reissue position the Composer Series partnership extended.
The method: Sprut's position runs through the plunderphonics tradition (the John Oswald-derived tradition the transatlantic experimental roster has cultivated) with saxophone-on-rock-band superimposition as the founding compositional procedure. Di Gregorio has documented the self-description: the method ‘creates a new soundscape and texture by overlaying a saxophone solo on top of a rock band’, the procedure being ‘superimposing’ / ‘plagiarism’ / ‘schizophonia’ (the Murray Schafer-derived working terminology repurposed). The Tzadik partner has documented the method as ‘unusual and quirky sampling collages from the Italian neo-primitive composer Giustino Di Gregorio’, the position combining modern technology with John Oswald-derived plunderphonics working concepts.
The founding 1995 document is Sprut (Goodbye Boozy Records, CD in a cardboard gatefold sleeve, 499 hand-numbered copies). The founding document's five-track lineup runs across C.E.S. (Cogito Ergo Sum), Oh.Blio!, Fluxo, MenteCatta and the Italian-absurdist title-position Allucinante Incontro Di Intensa Brevità Tra Un'Amaca Fiamminga E Un Diario Sgualcito (the documented Italian-absurdist title-idiom the Sprut position has cultivated). The founding document was the first release on the Goodbye Boozy Records imprint (Di Gregorio's own early partner; later partner across the 1996–1998 Italian garage punk cassette catalogue and later American and Canadian partner releases).
The partnership is with Tzadik Records (John Zorn's imprint) across the Composer Series. The 1999 Tzadik reissue document (TZ7050, 21 September 1999, 34:19) extended the founding 1995 lineup with added positions documented as Progetto Numero 2 and Progetto Numero 3. The position's Composer Series partnership documents the Sprut lineup as part of the Zorn-cultivated ‘worldwide community of contemporary musician-composers who find it difficult or impossible to release their music through more conventional channels’ (the documented Tzadik working positionion self-description). The Bureau reads the Tzadik partnership as one of the early 1990s partnerships between the Italian experimental tradition and the American downtown experimental tradition the Zorn partner has cultivated.
The later release runs through the Italian experimental network across the 2000s and 2010s. Di Gregorio's OMI collection working participation (the Sicilian partner), the Trapped Light installation position with Fabio Perletta (the Farmacia901 partner; manner of sinewave tones, glitches and simple drones), and the Diaspore project series with Davide Luciani (working as Orgon) document the Sprut position's sustained life beyond the early 1995–1999 catalogue. The Farmacia901 partner (operated by Fabio Perletta) has documented the Di Gregorio position as ‘an original artist from Teramo’ and has documented the 1999 Tzadik document as the historical working antecedent for the later collaborations.
The Bureau's editorial reading: Sprut is filed at Tier II as Giustino Di Gregorio's Italian plunderphonics position. The 30-year sustained life, the founding 1995 Goodbye Boozy Records document (499 hand-numbered copies, cardboard gatefold sleeve), the Tzadik Composer Series partnership (the expanded 1999 reissue document), the documented saxophone-on-rock-band superimposition method and the ‘schizophonia’ self-description constitute the significance the Bureau files. The position is adjacent to the People Like Us / Vicki Bennett UK plunderphonics tradition (the early 1990s plunderphonics partner the Bureau has chronicled) and to the documented John Oswald plunderphonics tradition, but operates from the Italian location at the smaller-scale palette characteristic of the early 1990s Italian ‘cut and sew’ tradition.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Holocene era · last revised c. the Elizabethan era