Negativland
Fair Use: The Story Of The Letter U And The Numeral 2

Negativland Vs U2.

This album is the discovery of a warrior sound Videodrome (USA - 1983, David Cronenberg) that takes no prisoners, no tenderness during the art of Negativland. We are beyond psychedelia, we have arrived at an invisible and bloody conquest of music at the expense of certain human brain areas. It is important to underline this aspect: Negativland is the sirens' song for the unfortunate who float on the waves of avant-garde music: we are talking about the future. The unprecedented overcoming of the Western and castrating conception of the song form (which avails itself, almost as a banal legacy, of Guitar-Bass-Drums-Voice) masterfully stupefied by the succession of virtuosos of classical instruments. Let's say it clearly: current songs are predominantly characterized by the voice, decrepit guitars now reformulate an already heard that is almost embarrassing. We fish again like children in the candy basket of the '60s - '70s, obtaining as a result (in the best case scenario) a group inferior in purity and taste compared to the original. And now, Negativland intervenes, evolved offspring of the desecrating and dreamlike art of the Residents: erudite manipulators of sound (who make use of a variety of computer impulses), and at the same time vital and not at all wagging at the leash of the mainstream (they have sold less than 100,000 copies in 25 years of career!).

To explain the flow of Negativland we can use the term sound collage, which is a psychotic medley of sounds repeated ad infinitum, gutted, raped, hammered, and thrown into the cauldron of a song with enormous suggestive power: a black eye on traditional psychedelia. The references to everyday sound are along the entire skeleton of their art, Negativland understood (just like Residents, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle) that every object stimulated differently is potentially a musical instrument endowed with its own notes and evocative abilities. But what remains in the end, regardless of the original "philosophy" around the music, is a sense of disorientation, physical and mental nausea: no one ever managed to be so hypnotic and to make a song become flesh. If you have any severe mental trauma or underlying instability, DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM! Even for the wisest: equip yourself with a legion of Travelgum: this LP can snack on your brain at any time of the day or night.

Around the LP: the album is a concept about copyright and the judicial saga involving Negativland in 1991, when they were sued by U2's record label for what they deemed an improper use of a small part of a song (strictly slashed and reassembled). An odyssey that generated 180 meticulously composed pages by powerful and experienced lawyers to which Negativland never managed to reply. The result? A fine of $90,000 (much more than they earned with their own music) and, besides losing the case, they also lost the support of their record label. Two weeks after the release of the single *U2*, the album was pulled from the market with 6,951 copies sold (insignificant crumbs), which vaguely clash with the tens of millions of copies by the accusers.
When small underground diamonds are crushed by the boorish and inexpressive rock. Negativland Vs U2.