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Bob Ostertag is a politically motivated iconoclastic sampling maestro, famed for getting himself into deep trouble in locations from El Salvador to Serbia. Sooner or Later is based on sounds which come from a recording of a young Salvadorian boy burying his father, who has been killed by El Salvador's National Guard. There is the sound of the boy's voice, a fly buzzing nearby, and the shovel striking dirt and rock. Ostertag then undertakes a series of variations and transformations, manipulating the original into unworldly rhythms and bizarre sound games. The only additional sounds come from a sample of alternative guitar hero Fred Frith. Ostertag describes the process: "The music is made by breaking the original recording into very small events, and stringing these events into musical structures, creating shapes different from the originals. If there is beauty we must find it in what is really there: the boy, the shovel, the fly. If we look closely, despite the unbearable sadness, we will discover it."Like Steve Reich's Its Gonna Rain, this is journalism, politics, documentary and experimental music rolled into one. Recorded in 1989 when Ostertag had just returned to music after years working in El Salvador, the first edition quickly went out of print. This re-release makes available one of the most intense, beautiful and disturbing records ever made.This is the second in a series which ReR will present over the next few months, as we re-release Bob Ostertag's back catalogue, in conjunction with Bob's "My Very Own Record Label" imprint. Each CD comes in a customised metal box."Ostertag did not simply create a political piece but a musical reality, in which sampling technology is used in a significant way. The music encircles reality, decomposes it into music and recomposes it until reality is no longer able to escape. It is this clarity that makes "Sooner or Later" great music, a music that has something to do with life again". Die Zeit