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Negativland's first song-based album in over 28 years is released today, July 15th on their record label, Seeland Records. The album goes by the silly name of Thigmotactic and after first pass at listening to the album, I did enjoy its mix of original music and lyrics, mixed with samples.
In celebration of Thigmotactic, they are making two rare public appearance:
07/17/08
- Wham City’s Whartscape in Baltimore, MD
07/20/08
- H.O.P.E. (Hackers of Planet Earth) conference in NYC
- If more dates should appear, I'll update it here. More information can be found on our
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Formed in 1979 by their two founding members, Mark Hosler and Richard Lyons, it would seem that Lyons' have taken a seat back with this latest release (however, he does contribute on one song, "Influencial You" on Thigmotactic).
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They first rose to fame with that infamous U2 EP incident. Released in 1991, the song featured Casey Kasem blowing his top off, mixed with samples from U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". Not surprisingly, they went through a long lawsuit battle with U2's record label Island Records, resulting in having the EP deleted. Although that didn't stop people from getting a hold of "bootlegs".
What's interesting to note, in today's context of the remixed generation, is that it's become somewhat normal for people to take things in the media and producing mashups... In some ways, Negativland predate the "viral" media of today with "U2".
So, back to Thigmotactic, this is possible the most accessible album to date. There's something for everyone, but I think the silly sex songs would get people's attention, like "Your Skin is Gelatin" is about vaginas or "Lying on the Grass" is about an unspoken homosexual desire that would cause you to rewatch Brokeback Mountain.
One thing I will say is that it's really hard to use one or two songs to really describe Negativland, as they are always evolving. I ended up using "Richard Nixon Died Today", the song is available for download on their myspace. The song uses excerpts from Dick Nixon's last address speech at the White House, which I believe is public domain.
Their copy/paste music style ranges all over the board, in fact, there's even a 50s inspired song, "Steak on a Whim" that sounds very similar to The Chordettes' "Mister Sandman" (but it's not this song). Most of the music and lyrics on this album is original, which stands apart from their previous releases.
Another thing I wanted to mention is that their liner notes to this CD includes an original art by Hosler for every song. Each artwork reflects each song, for instance, here is the artwork for "By Truck" a fun song about where milk comes from.
Thigmotactic can be bought directly from Negativland, I would recommend the CD version as it comes with a very nice sleek 36 lyric book (with artwork that I previously mentioned in the paragraph above).
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