- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
The sound of a western town at dawn gone mad with isolation, We Are Him is a document of Gira's manic undulations through blues, country, blackened rock 'n' roll, and primal exorcism. It is a sullen, fallen, redemptive, contradictory plea to touch the light and joy of God or to know that suffering is our final and only fate.
The Angels of Light come to this record with all guns blazing: a brief and dramatic piano run introduces a pulsing, violent, aquatic rhythm scored by an erupting organ and a near prophetic vocal delivery. It's a stream of sound that comes complete with undertow, its unrelenting stomp dragging the music out towards the endless sway of the sea. "Black Water Song" begins the album in medias res, the tumult of what is to come foreshadowed by the thick-veined madness in Gira's voice and the boiling hysteria in the band's crashing skulls. The world has either come to an end or it is already falling apart at the seams with paranoia, sickness, and red, red rivers. When "Promise of Water" begins all the craze of We Are Him's opening song is tempered; the gnashing of teeth is here a slow march through the desert with the light of hope still lifting the world's feet forward. As the music progresses, Gira and his entire cast of characters slowly transform day into night and chart a slow decline into bitterness, resentment, and perpetual doubt. Bit by bit the curtain begins to fall on the stage and then, in a sudden and unexpected twist, the sun rises, the rain falls, and The Angels of Light transform perverse chaos into celebration.
"Joseph's Song" turns the band on its head. A Beatle-esque brass section opens the song up with a kind of brightness I wouldn't expect from anything Gira touches. The lyrics betray the cheerful arrangement of the song, but all in all it casts a new light upon the rest of the album, marking the end of its descent and the beginning of its ascent towards something like reconciliation. "We Are Him" begins with the celebratory chant, "Let him in / Let him in / Let him in" and is propelled by the country twang of a silver-tongued guitar and a choir's bristling response to Gira's throaty dirge. It's as though all the darkness of the first five tunes has been temporarily alleviated, all inward movement directed outwards and upwards towards the heavens. Even the languishing "Sometimes I Dream I'm Hurting You" is colored by mention of prayer and love. As it pirouette's into an organ sparked rock tune, Gira calls out for a flaming sword: if there must be end, let us all hope we can accept it and slip into the fold of life without hesitation.
There's little I can say about We Are Him that is negative. Akron/Family's influence on Gira's music is more evident than ever, but his song-writing ability is far beyond the band's own and the two talents exist in near total harmony. Hearing Gira more fully embrace the country and blues roots of his recent output is welcome and the songs are stronger for it. "The Man We Left Behind" and "Star Chaser" are in competition with each other for song of the year and both open their arms to the buzzing tilt of American music. If there is anything to complain about, it's that some of the aggression on the record sounds forced, especially in the case of "My Brother's Man." Gira's lyricism has progressed since his sadistic chants to love and violence with Swans, but now and again he deems it necessary to fall back on self-destructing metaphors and unnecessarily crude deliveries. The performances of many of these songs demonstrate profound intimacy and delicacy, the nimble cadence of their procession is capable of reaching into madness and joy more completely than any forced profanity could. Hearing him deliver "Mary Lou / F-f-f-fuck you" with such a flat tone is disappointing (almost embarrassing) when positioned next to the more effective subtlety of "The Visitor."
The Angels of Light have, however, crafted their most perfect and fully-realized album. Fans of New Mother and other purists might have my head for such a comment, but after 25 years of near continuous output Gira sounds most sure of himself on this record. The confidence in the music is naked, its multi-faceted elements each shining through without hindrance.
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
On their latest for Rephlex, the loyal Brothers D'arcangelo synthesize praiseworthy tracks bubbling with such nostalgic tension that, much to my amazement and delight, I want to care about IDM all over again. While everyone else seems preoccupied with that old tired is-it-AFX-or-not debate over The Tuss' latest releases for the label, they should be giving it up for these guys instead.
For obvious reasons, I had essentially written off this style of music completely and moved on to sounds less stubbornly stationary. Yet I was willing to give D'arcangelo's new album a shot based on the strength of their back catalog, underrated though it may be. Like any underdog worth rooting for, the duo of Fabrizio and Marco D'Arcangelo has consistently remained in favor with a dedicated group of enthusiasts, though like many such acts in the post-Artificial Intelligence set the act never reached the levels of scenester popularity of those oft-cited names I wont bother repeating here. I'm far more interested in what these Italian stallions are doing these days than being suckered into another manufactured viral marketing scampaign of pondering who's behind the latest Rephlex or Warp pseudonym. As Eksel clearly evinces, D'arcangelo has no need for such blatant unit-shifting gimmickry as has been employed in the cases of braindancers like Astrobotnia, Chris Clark, Global Goon, and, most recently, The Tuss.
Anyone even casually familiar with D'arcangelo knows what to expect from the project. Alive with frenetic and stuttering breakbeats and romantically resonant Detroit flirtations, Eksel gouges lavishness and beauty from the familiar well-mined caverns of "intelligent" electronic music. From the gurgling mechanical undertones of "Ternat" to the adorned sonic streams of the subdued "Elix," the album steers clear of technical, Autechrean anal mania and instead basks in the quaint luminescence of glorious melody. Teeming with pensiveness and bliss, the emotive electro-pop gem "A Grey Sunday" smacks of a new wave influence and near-fetishism that so many listeners have already picked up on before. Smashing, bristly snares and a gelatinous bassline combine on the rubbery funk of "The Asker," while "Nadine" swaggers and sweats with its sultry yet subtly robotic eroticism.
The highlight of this set, "H13," arouses mushy memories of a time when drippy ambience and trippy beats went hand in hand. If chillout rooms were still abundant today, this soul-gazing track could go on infinite loop for hours without overstaying its welcome. That ever-present mood, so palpable that it can not only be absorbed but also nearly embraced, makes Eksel such a heavenly, indispensable record meant to be consumed in either glacial darkness or radiant sunlight. D'arcangelo has made music to make us feel again, to get lost inside ourselves without fear of debt or death, and for that we should be thankful.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
The latest release from Norway's hungriest noise composers is comparatively a more subdued affair, and it is much more subtle than its boisterous title would have one to believe. John Hegre and Lasse Marhaug present a noteworthy combination of heavily controlled guitar feedback and studio treatments characterize the work as a whole, but each piece is very different from the next.
Opener "God Damn This Ugly Sound" is less an exercise in composition and more in locating, as it is a six-minute excerpt from a medical record documenting the sounds of various diseases. The rest isn't as obtuse, as it segues nicely into the looping guitar feedback and shrill squeal of "Blues for Sterling Hayden," which could easily be an exercise in sheer noise blast, but is instead a carefully controlled track that demonstrates just how subtle the duo can be, even under such 'extreme' conditions. Structurally similar is "A Bucket of Mayo," which is built out of feedback fragments and the warm crunch of vinyl surface noise.
Marhaug can't help but show his noise chops he has honed in his solo career, and "Not Half Bad to the Bone" demonstrates his penchant for explosive bassy blasts, yet lurking under the crunch are some subtle, melodic tones that the average band wouldn't have bothered with. The ending series of false starts from a live band is a nice touch as well. "Tentacles of Broken Teeth" is somewhat reminiscent of Marhaug's recent collaboration with Nils Henrik Asheim on Touch, all massive, cavernous reverbs and expansive metallic drones, but here a bit more harsh and distortion oriented.
The centerpieces of the disc are the two massive lengths tracks—the aforementioned "Blues for Sterling Hayden" and the title track—the latter being a more controlled affair of synth tones feedback, and even a bit of dark ambience. The long tracks especially show this duo's flair for creating beautifully structured chaos.
Balls the Size of Texas, Liver the Size of Brazil cannot neatly be labeled as a 'noise' work, but it certainly has the elements that fans of Marhaug's solo work will enjoy, but enough compositional and structural elements that anyone who understands the appeal of esoteric music would love as well.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Released with the help of United Dairies and Jnana Records, Freida Abtan's music is a strange cinematography of metaphysical conundrums and invisible events. Contained herein is time frozen, inspected, and unwoven into infinite threads of unusual shapes and proportions. Abtan's subtle flourishes are impressive, sometimes simultaneously fantastic and terrifying, but they do not add up to a wholly consistent album.
United Jnana
Abtan's sounds are magical and transportive; their vivid fidelity and unequivocal crispness weave particular narratives with no small degree of confidence. From the beginning her work is organic, sounding less like music and more like the recorded adventures of an entrepreneurial and esoteric detective probing the deepest recesses of haunted caverns and finding hidden worlds tucked away there. In this way the title of her album reflects its content; that which is hidden, unnoticed, or too subtle is brought to the fore by Abtan's careful arrangements and given a detailed survey. An entire spectrum of insectoid percussion and globular synthetics are revealed in her compositions, their microscopic lives brought to life by gusts of electricity and storming spirits trapped behind a veil of static and other interference. What Abtan does best on Subtle Movements is construct a believable world of sounds, each unique and absorbing in their various depictions. She's captured the megalomaniacal rituals of a modern electrical shaman on tape, teased from the air the tortured confessions of a now reformed specter, and ploughed the ether in order to return a report of all its miniscule interactions.
What she hasn't done is found a convincing way to tie all the imagery together. Subtle Movements is split into 12 uneven portions, some of them only a minute and a half in length, the longest, "Shimmer and Dissolve," stretching just beyond 20 minutes. Many of the pieces feel as though they could endure for at least as long as "Shimmer and Dissolve" does. When "The Works and Days of Hands" comes to an end, it is too soon. This would all be a tiny complaint, but there are also cases where the flow from one track to the next is inconsistent, causing the album to feel a bit bumpy where a more considerate transition would've made for a more immersive album. That seems to be the name of Abtan's game after all: these are all worlds of movement, detailed expressions of everything that goes on beneath any surface that are meant to consume the listener and erase whatever is going on beyond the reach of headphones or speakers. If this were meant to be a collection of odds and ends such a complaint wouldn't exist, but I feel as though there was meant to be a serious read thread running through this album, it simply disappears too often into the concentrated slices of abstraction.
On the other hand, Abtan is clearly talented and massively creative. Each of the individual tracks contain clear evidence of a careful and thoughtful musician with no shortage of great ideas. It will simply take an emphasis on the bigger picture to make the entire project as alluring as the parts.
samples:
Read More
Another bewitching album to waltz from the Vortex Vault, this one evokes cinematic imagery if only because there is less of a focus on vocals here and more emphasis on atmosphere. One of the best things about Liles' music is how it sparks the imagination beyond the scope of intention, and Black Market is no exception.
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
One of the pioneering noise projects of the genre's early 1980s heyday has returned with a new disc that manages to both push the brutal aspect of their discography to its natural limits while still maintaining an ear for subtlety and depth that tends to be lacking in the realms of harsh electronics.
Ground Fault/Hospital Productions
Sutcliffe Jugend were among the creators of what is now known as power electronics and so called 'noise.' While contemporaries Whitehouse tend to get most of the credit, SJ's Kevin Tomkins' time with that band lead to some of their most violent and brutal tracks. SJ (Tomkins and Paul Taylor) has continued on and off since the early '80s, consistently trying new approaches, from pure noise (everything in the early days) to guitar based experimentation (Death Mask), each reinvention saw the duo trying something different. Following up the twin albums for Cold Meat Industries (When Pornography is No Longer Enough and The Victim As Beauty) was a difficult proposition, given the violence and brutality of those two occasionally reached comedically absurd levels (see: "Come on cunt, show me your fucking titties").
After two side project releases (the more atmospheric and experimental Between Silences and Threnody for the Victims of Ignorance, both as just SJ), Taylor and Tomkins have reinstated the Sutcliffe Jugend moniker, and the new work meshes the brutal elements of those earlier incarnations with the experimentation and compositional subtleties of the SJ work. Do not assume the violence has been overly stifled, however: the subtle musical loops of "What If" belie its violent underpinning and otherwordly vocals, and the instrumental closer "Blind Ignorance" is every bit as torturous as anything else in the duo's canon.
Beyond the harsh noise violence lies a great deal of subtlety and structure though, as well as experimentation. "This Is The Truth" features some nearly melodic, almost gospel like vocals from Tomkins with the pulsating digital noise throughout the track. Even more bizarre, "Obsession," opens with bizarre found sounds with some guitar string treatments and what almost resembles a harpsichord. Something must be said for "Pigboy" as well, one of the most hateful pieces of music I've heard, though I suspect the vocals are intended to be much more cathartic than accusatory.
Lyrically this album is an odd beast. Tomkins' shrieks and screams are often buried in layers of effects so the lyrics are not entirely clear, but an overarching theme of existential philosophy and spirituality/spiritualism seems prominent here, which is of much greater thematic depth than is usually associated with this genre. According to their Web site, a great deal of new activity is planned for the coming months, and this sharp spike in productivity should interest anyone who is a fan of difficult/violent music such as this.
samples:
Read More
- Gary Suarez
- Albums and Singles
Dispensed in both CD and double LP formats, Phillip Sollman's first album as Efdemin makes frequent, almost casual references to early naughties Force Tracks tech-house as often as more recent Kompakt electronic dance music. Working capably within a manifestly derivative style, Sollman eagerly inches his way towards grand peaks and windswept valleys on "Lohn & Brot." Tracks like "Back To School" are meant to lift the spirits on the dancefloor, utilizing emotive layered sounds replete with carefully crafted hooks. It is abundantly clear how much Sollman adores melody; when trying his hand at asceticism, as with the bleak "Stately, Yes," he can hardly resist nearly four minutes in to let rays of sparkling light burst through. The slowing metamorphosing "Bergwein" adds some of that old school Artificial Intelligence warmth into the mix, while "April Fools" disrupts its own sense of calm with pinprick percussion, militantly rigid stabs, and camera shutter snares.
Founded by a trio of well-regarded producers, Dial rightfully earns considerable respect from anyone following minimal techno and house. Since 2000, the label has output a fair number of memorable releases on vinyl and compact disc, among these one of my favorite albums of the last few years: Pantha Du Prince's superlative Diamond Daze. Fans of that record, his recent follow-up, and the rest of Dial's roster will assuredly find plenty to like in this project, as will those who still romanticize tech-house’s past. Those hoping for a progression worthy of the attention presently being paid to this album, however, will likely find that it's hardly the brilliant masterpiece it's been previously been chalked up as.
Read More
- Scott Mckeating
- Albums and Singles
Olde English Spelling BeeThe extensive liners inside the vinyl’s gorgeous gatefold sleeve talk about hope, but the music offers only glimpses of this. The opener “Heart Sutra” rings out a sleek toned Morse code refrain, a signal to open hearts and minds, but this is the first sides only such moment. The 16 minute title track keeps to a darker and more discouraging path, single notes subtly warping into something that’s peculiarly of the other. As the sleeve notes point out, Alcorn uses other parts of instrument to generate different pitches, the ends of strings providing deeper and damper notes. At times her performance sounds like that of a stoned and lost 12 string player, Alcorn going for melodic parts while her hands instead subconsciously transcribe her worry and anguish.
The second side’s four tracks keep up the clear recorded sound but the playing seems softly and delicately deranged. A dark mood tries to cast itself over the rest of the record, an air of desolation in the line of wrong spiralling notes. But despite this negativity, the songs seem to find a stasis by balancing the forces of bleakness and strength, repeated listens revealing strength in the minimalism. Its surprising how someone who uses notes as sparingly ends up wrapping the album in such confusion, it’s an unusual ride. It might not be too long for that resurrection that Susan Alcorn's waiting for.
Read More
- Matthew Amundsen
- Albums and Singles
Apparently quite enamored of composers like Reich, Glass, and Riley, Dwinell uses repetition in much the same way as they do but with instruments like acoustic guitars, banjos, and mandolins rather than orchestral or symphonic instruments. It's a nice effect, but it gets dull after a while, especially since this type of music is fairly static, lacking any peaks or valleys to give a sense of movement. Also, considering that these basic ideas were already developed and popularized by others many years ago makes them a little less significant. However, when Dwinell imparts something of himself through the use of his vocals, the songs take off.
Using repetition as a compositional tool rather than a foreground element serves Dwinell's singing well, as evidenced on songs like "Candide," the playful "Sentry at Eleusis," and the sublime "Lost In the Desert, Near Death." To be fair, there are a few instrumentals in the vein of his heroes that add something different to their work, like the jazz-inflected "My Song Before the Gates" or the polyrhythmic "Processional," but for the most part, Dwinell's songs work better when he puts aside his obvious influences. There's still plenty of beauty to be found on this album, even if some of it sounds vaguely like things I've heard before.
Read More
- Matthew Amundsen
- Albums and Singles
Calling the album Photosynthesis is pretty obvious for a band named Plants, and unfortunately most of the song titles similarly lack poetry. Convenient rather than descriptive titles like "Seedling," "Roots," and "Tumbleweed" stretch the concept a little too thin. Usually this wouldn't bother me, but I also had difficulty determining exactly what the group is trying to express, and these titles didn't help. I suspect a certain reverence for the plant kingdom and its structural parts because of the gravity of the atmospheric instrumentals on the album, yet I don't really get a sense of why the group honors these things. Titles less generic would have gone a long way toward providing a context for these ideas. Even so, I did like quite a bit of the material here.
The lush and gorgeous opening title track is a great introduction, and equally compelling is the hazy "Roots." "Seedling," one of the few tracks with vocals, has a pleasant vibe and melody. On the other hand, "Seedling Two" isn't particularly memorable, nor is "Tumbleweed," apart from some unusual banjo playing. My favorite track is easily "Seedling Three" because it best incorporates the group's folk and drone tendencies, making it the album's most fully realized song. An album of others like these would have been stunning, but instead the group comes just shy of making something truly remarkable.
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
August 2nd, 2007
Legendary culture jam-band Negativland announces upcoming release of My Favorite Things DVD (complete with doo-wop covers CD by the 180 Gs) and reissue of its 1983 conceptual masterpiece, A Big 10-8 Place.
Group launches first East Coast tour in seven years with a Time Out New York profile and performance at NYC’s Highline Ballroom.
Declared heroic by their peers for refashioning culture into what the group considers to be more honest statements, Negativland suggests that refusing to be original, in the traditional sense, is the only way to make art that has any depth within commodity capitalism... – The New York Times
Twisted genius...compelling...parody and satire as a grass roots weapon of consumer resistance. – Rolling Stone
Negativland isn't just some group of merry pranksters; its art is about tearing apart and reassembling found images to create new ones, in an attempt to make social, political and artistic statements. Hilarious and chilling. – The Onion
Negativland’s greatest hits become all new moving pictures in the amazing and long awaited DVD release of My Favorite Things, to be issued via the Other Cinema (Sonic Outlaws, So Wrong They’re Right) imprint on October 23rd. Years in the making, this package is an epic career-capping project from Negativland. Sure to please the group’s old fans, this very accessible DVD is also an incredible introduction to Negativland's work for new ones. Created with a crew of 18 other experimental filmmakers from all over the USA, Our Favorite Things is a collaborative project that takes a striking visual leap into the same legally gray area that Negativland has been exploring with sound for the last 27 years. A dark and charming film collection of unforgettable collage and classic cut-up entertainment for all ages, it also comes with over 90 minutes of bonus material, as well as a truly silly and bizarre 18-minute bonus CD of 100% acapella versions of Negativland's work by The 180 Gs, a five-person black acapella group from Detroit, that has endeavored to “cover” Negativland’s cut up collage work in R 'n B, Doo-Wop, and Gospel styles. The resulting album 180 D’Gs To The Future! is extremely fun, funny, and very weird.
Also in the works is the long awaited re-issue of Negativland's legendary 1983 difficult listening conceptual suburban epic A Big 10-8 Place. Over three years in the making, and with ten-thousand-million-billion analog tape splices, this insanely cut-up and uniquely weird release remains the hands down favorite of many fans of Negativland's work. This re-issue, due out on September 25th, comes with a 60-minute bonus DVD of Negativland's No Other Possibility video, created in the mid-1980’s.
As if all of this Negativland activity weren’t enough to cause a government reaction, the band will bring a new version of its weekly radio broadcast (“Over the Edge” – on the air since 1981) to the live stage, mixing music, found sounds, found dialog, scripts, personalities, and sound effects within a “radio” theater-of-the-mind. Time Out New York featured the band this week in anticipation of its first New York City performance since a sold-out show at Irving Plaza in 2000 (LINK). “It's All In Your Head FM” is a two-hour-long, action-packed look at monotheism, the supernatural God concept, and the all-important role played by the human brain in our beliefs. Dr. Oslo Norway is your “radio” host, and Christianity and Islam are the featured religions, as Negativland asks you to contemplate some complex, serious, silly, and challenging ideas about human belief in this audio cut-up mix best described as a “documentary collage”. “It's All In Your Head FM” is a compelling and uniquely fun presentation of sticky theological concepts, which has actually been known to provoke arguments for days after the show is over.
Opening the NYC performance will be two other significant contributors to the history of re-appropriation of found sounds – Steinski and Double Bee. In 1983, Tommy Boy Records held a promotional contest, in which entrants were asked to remix the single “Play That Beat, Mr. D.J.” by G.L.O.B.E. and Whiz Kid (members of Afrika Bambaataa's Soulsonic Force). The entry submitted by Steinski and Double Dee, “Lesson 1 — The Payoff Mix” was packed with sampled appropriations from other records -- not only from early Hip-Hop records and from Funk and Disco records that were popular with Hip-Hop DJs, but with short snippets of older songs by Little Richard and The Supremes, along with vocal samples from sources as diverse as instructional tap-dancing records and Humphrey Bogart films.
Double Dee and Steinski followed up this success with “Lesson 2 — The James Brown Mix” in 1984, which began with a sample from The War of The Worlds before quickly running through a montage of memorable breaks from classic James Brown records, with sampled appearances by Dirty Harry and Bugs Bunny.
In 1985 came “Lesson 3 — The History of Hip-Hop Mix” which attempted a survey of the great breakdancing favorites, along with snippets from Johnny Carson and Hernando's Hideaway. The Illegal Art label, home to notorious musical collage artist Girl Talk will issue a definitive compilation of this long unavailable material in 2008.
Negativland Live:
08/02 New York, NY Highline Ballroom (tune in live at www.free103point9.org )
08/03 Philadelphia, PA International House
08/04 Baltimore, MD The Church on St. Paul St.
08/05 Washington DC Warehouse Theater
08/07 Charlottesville, VA Satellite Ballroom
Our Favorite Things DVD Chapter Listing:
180 d’Gs To The Future Bonus CD Track Listing:
Release Date: October 23rd, 2007
01. Learning To Communicate
02. No Business
03. Gimme The Mermaid (VIDEO )
04. U2
05. Time Zones
06. Freedom’s Waiting
07. Yellow, Black and Rectangular
08. The Bottom Line
09. Guns
10. Over The Hiccups
11. The Mashin’ of The Christ
12. KPIX News
13. Truth In Advertising
14. Why Is This Commercial?
15. The Greatest Taste Around
16. Taste In Mind
17. Humanitarian Effort
18. Drink It Up
19. My Favorite Things
01. Intro (Everything’s Going Fine)
02. Christianity Is Stupid (MP3 )
03. Helter Stupid (Excerpt)
04. Greatest Taste Around
05. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
06. Car Bomb
07. A Nice Place To Live
08. Seat Bee Sate
09. Roy Storey’s Sports Line
10. I Am God
11. Playboy Channel
12. Oven Noises
13. Theme From A Big 10-8 Place (Live)
A Big 10-8 Place Track Listing:
Release Date: September 25th, 2007
01. Theme from a Big Place
02. A Big 10-8 Place, Pt. One
03. Clowns and Ballerinas
04. Introduction
05. Four Fingers
06. 180-G, A Big 10-8 Place, Pt. Two
More About Negativland:
“Negativland, longtime advocates of fair use allowances for pop media collage, are perhaps America's most skilled plunderers from the detritus of 20th century commercial culture. Negativland are media addicts who see society suffering under a constant barrage of TV, canned imagery, advertising and corporate culture...the band's latest project is razor sharp, microscopically focused, terribly fun and a bit psychotic. – Wired
“Brutally hilarious...a compelling argument for the anti-copyright movement.” – Village Voice
“Fearless artistes or foolhardy risk-takers.... by constantly haranguing the audience with authentic advertising spiel and highlighting its transparency, they kill the messenger, kill the message and produce highly entertaining art simultaneously. – L.A. Weekly
Since 1980, the four or five Floptops known as Negativland have been creating records, fine art, video, books, radio and live performance using appropriated sound, image and text. Mixing original materials and music with things taken from corporately owned mass culture, Negativland re-arranges these bits and pieces to make them say and suggest things that they never intended to. In doing this kind of cultural opposition and “culture jamming” (a term coined by Negativland in 1984), Negativland have been sued twice for copyright infringement.
Okay, but what, you still ask, is Negativland exactly? That's hard to answer. Negativland definitely isn't a “band,” though they may look like one when you see their CDs for sale in your local shopping mall. They're more like some sort of goofy yet serious European-style artist/activist collective - an unhealthy mix of John Cage, Lenny Bruce, Pink Floyd, Bruce Connor, Firesign Theatre, Abbie Hoffman, Robert Rauschenberg, 1970's German electronic music, old school punk rock attitude, surrealist performance art, your high school science teacher…and lot's more.
Over the years Negativland's “illegal” collage and appropriation based audio and visual works have touched on many things - pranks, media hoaxes, media literacy, the evolving art of collage, creative anti-corporate activism in a media saturated multi-national world, the bizarre banality of suburban existence, file sharing, intellectual property issues, wacky surrealism, evolving notions of art and ownership and law in a digital age, artistic and humorous critiques of mass media and culture, and, of course, so-called “culture jamming” (a term now thoroughly and somewhat distastefully commodified by Adbusters Magazine.)
While they have been, since getting sued, aggressively and publicly involved in advocating significant reforms of our nation's copyright laws, and are often perceived as creative and funny shit-stirring anti-corporate activists, Negativland are artists first and activists second, not the other way around. Their art and media interventions have (often naively) posed questions about the nature of sound, media, control, ownership, propaganda and perception, with the results of these questions and explorations being what they release to the public. Their work is now referenced and taught in many college courses in the US, has been written about in over 30 books (including No Logo by Naomi Klein, Media Virus by Douglas Rushkoff, and various biographies of the band U2), cited in legal journals, and they often lecture about their work here and in Europe.
In 1995 Negativland released a 270 page book with 72 minute CD entitled Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2. This book documented their infamous four-year long legal battle over their 1991 release of an audio piece entitled U2. They were the subjects of Craig Baldwin's 1995 feature documentary Sonic Outlaws. Negativland also created the soundtrack and sound design for Harold Boihem's 1997 documentary film The Ad and The Ego, an excellent in-depth look into the hidden agendas of the corporate ad world that goes very deep into the gross and subtle ways that we are adversely affected by advertising.
Negativland is interested in unusual noises and images (especially ones that are found close at hand), unusual ways to restructure such things and combine them with their own music and art, and mass media transmissions which have become sources, and subjects, of much of their work. Negativland covets insightful wackiness from anywhere, low-tech approaches whenever possible, telling humor, and vital social targets of any kind. Without ideological preaching, Negativland often becomes a subliminal culture sampling service concerned with making art about everything we aren't supposed to notice.
A complete discography of Negativland's work is available at the band’s website.
On The Web:
www.negativland.com
www.myspace.com/officialnegativland
Read More
