In this chapter, the author discusses the history, practice, aesthetics and socio/cultural ramifications of ‘sampling', his point if departure being John Oswald's vinyl EP and his later CD Plunderphonic (1988/1998) that thrust the sampling debate to the forefront of the popular and art music discourse at the time. He offers a succinct history of sound recording developments, describes several compositional techniques that were of result these developments, and discusses the cultural underpinnings and implications of the use of recorded sound in musical composition.