sound recorded on the fly that no conventional sampler was capable of at the time. Following the release of Getting a Head, Ostertag became the first of his generation of musicians to have his work presented at The Kitchen, at the time New York City's premiere venue for new music. At the same time, Ostertag was experimenting with improvising using the looped cassette tapes used in the telephone answering machines of the day, played in a collection of cheap portable cassette recorders, each one modified to malfunction in a different way. This led to the 1981 release of Voice of America, recorded at concerts in New York and London, with Fred Frith and vocalist Phil Minton. Ostertag's use of politically charged news snippets presaged the common use of such material later in the decade in hip hop Central America With his sudden success came a greater involvement in politics, specifically in the turbulent revolutions and counter-revolutions of Central America in the 1980s. As Ostertag became increasingly involved in such political issues, and increasingly dissatisfied with the music industry, he threw himself into the effort to overthrow the military dictatorship in El Salvador, and for nearly ten years abandoned music altogether. Ostertag eventually became an expert on the political crisis in Central America and published widely for a diverse range of publications, including Pensamiento Propio (Nicaragua), Pensamiento Critico (Puerto Rico), The Guardian (London), the Weekly Mail (South Africa), Mother Jones and the NACLA Report on the Americas (US), AMPO (Japan), and even the clandestine theoretical journal of the New People's Army in the Philippines. He alternated his time in Central America with organizing and public speaking in the US, giving lectures at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, and many other schools and institutions. His reporting on the bombing of rebel-held areas in El Salvador won a “Most Censored Story of the Year” award from Project Censored. Oliver Stone’s Salvador (1986) features James Woods in the lead role as the Pacific News Service correspondent in El Salvador, the position Ostertag held. Some of his writings from Central America are included in his 2009 book of collected essays, Creative Life: Music, Politics, People, and Machines. Return to music Ostertag returned to music in 1988 when Frith persuaded him to join Frith's review band, Keep the Dog. He also appeared in Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel's 1990 documentary film on Frith, Step Across the Border.