Negativland
Escape From Noise

THE REVIEW

Few bands can boast as many juicy anecdotes as Negativland. Just think of the bloody legal battle over plagiarism waged by U2 (which forced them to shell out 90,000 big bucks to the Sunday Jesus Christ, Bono Vox), or the fan who butchered relatives in the subliminal frenzy of "Christianity Is Stupid," singing all happily sha la la its ironic "Kill your parents and we'll take you on tour," and again, Steve Albini who used the Berkeley, California nerds' site as a vehicle for his essay "The Problem With Music."

Well, it becomes clear from the first notes that Negativland is not a common band. Their sound is a mix of Dadaism, madness, grotesque, and sound experimentation with a bloody-punk attitude that makes them immediately visible within the avant-garde zombie landscape that populates the world. Let's be honest; we can't stand electronic radical chic authors who grow like mushrooms, creators of those soporific messes that make La Monte Young's drones seem like a carnival parade in Rio with clinking topless ladies. Sometimes I wonder if there is something more dismal (excluding Dream Theater) than mere sound research for its own sake. Well, with Negativland!! forget it!! Orgies of trumpets and cartoon ragas, songs sung by children, lists of rock bands to emphasize the commodification of the musical product, bombs exploding in the midst of tribal punk, methods of torture, missed orgasms on the Playboy channel due to encephalic white noise, a sermon-snake on religion "Christianity is stupid, abandon it," spastic electronics standing over a noise woman and Japanese noise, deliriums on "escape from noise," a pop ballad with a Californian flavor.

Amidst this chaos, the influence of '70s German kraut rock is evident (the group's name is taken from the Neu! suite), of Stockhausen's sound explorations, of the cut and paste style of the Residents (present on the album along with Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead), and of Velvet Underground-style psychedelia. Pruning some dialogues and passages would have resulted in a five-star masterpiece, but even so, the record remains immense in its jumping like a flea or a TV channel from one shot to another in just the blink of an eye.

Bless your eardrums with this stray random like a Frank Zappa boarding the hardcore train in derailment longings.

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