Customer Reviews

Escape from Noise

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Escape From Noise is one of Negativland's best. But...please, please...buy the CD from the band's own Seeland label. There's another link on amazon; you can easily jump over to it.

When Negativland got into legal trouble over their hilarious U2 parody, they got screwed not only by Island Records (who ridiculously claimed that the obscure release would confuse U2 fans and deprive the mega-wealthy band of sales), and not only Casey Kasem (who would hardly seem to have a right to censor his own words).

No, they also got screwed by SST Records, their OWN LABEL. That's SST, the indie label with a lot of cred based on their having released the Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. and a lot of other great music.

Although--rumor has it--they didn't do a good job of getting around to actually paying these artists (despite the tremendous sales said bands were generating, so much so that SST releases have often been unavailable due to the label not producing enough copies to keep up with demand).

But where SST could have stood behind Negativland when Island came after them, instead they did everything they could to screw over their own band -- primarily by making them pay legal fees from every recording they'd ever made, forever.

So if you buy Escape From Noise from SST, you're giving money to people with a "cool" aura they don't deserve, who've acted almost as greedy as the major label which succeeded--for many years, though not permanently--in preventing fans from hearing Negativland's U2 parody.

If you buy the Seeland release, then the money goes to Negativland. Who need it, and deserve it.

(Standard disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. This account is true merely to the best of my understanding, and may not be 100% true in every detail. Hey, I don't want Island or SST coming after ME, either.)

You may or may not laugh at a man with a bullhorn, advising you that ¡§Communism Is Good! Communism is good!¡¨. I laughed pretty hard.

The jokes here are subtle and sort of accidental, relying on surprising edits and strange juxtapositionings. Negativland takes found sound and splices it together. The result is not exactly pure bliss. I would say this album is, by turns, tedious, surprising, amusing, confusing, senseless, coherent, and clever.

A child sings Somewhere Over The Rainbow but with the hiccups. A punk folksinger plays a song with a one word, charmless chorus ¡§CARBOMB!¡¨ screamed at the top of his lungs. A cold-war era segment of a call in radio show gets paranoid about Russia, pointing out that it has 13 time zones. A very slick voice over introduces a song which has been perfectly engineered to be a hit, pre-formulated for instant success across a wide range of demographics (and what a song it is!). There's a commercial for a beautiful suburb you can move to that's full of sycamores and...handguns.

I wish I could know where the sounds come from. They record random broadcasts from CB, AM and short wave for starters but there are also home recordings from what seem to be strangers. Do they buy these at garage sales? Who knows, maybe someone you know is on this album!

Their cut and paste effect reminds me of a friend who sometimes takes letters I send her and composes a reply entirely from the phrases of my own letter. Back comes my own letter, recognizable in parts, but totally put through a blender. Why do this? Why create a work of art that's just a mangling of someone elses words? Because the result is a surprising and strange poem, occasionally clever and beautiful, but often even better, meaningless and beautiful.

This is not a music album, though it does contain some music. It is a sound collage that bears repeated listening. Recommended if you like the Firesign Theater radio drama LPs.

"The first cut on this record has been cross-format focussed for airplay success. As you well know, a record must break on radio in order to actually provide a living for the artists involved. Up until now, you've had to make these record-breaking decisions on your own, relying only on perplexing intangiblities like taste and intuition. But now there's a better way."

This is the announcement that starts the record. Obviously there's so many things wrong about this announement that I don't want to point them all out. Negativland have made it this far, despite their complete disregard for radio. Escape From Noise is the culmination of their achievements. While their earlier records didn't really have any coherence to them, this one has a theme, more or less, although the actual sound is a boiling pot for more diverse scattered samples ever.

Noise. It's everywhere, in different shapes and forms. It's in the media bombardment we face daily, it's the jackhammers outside your window, and it's the sheer number of people around you. Negativland even brings it down to a microscopic scale, with the noise of marital arguments, your cable gone out and even a simple anomaly like the hiccups.

A loud echoing voice in "Michael Jackson" announces with an air of authority "The Cars. Herbie Hancock. Bonnie Tyler. ZZ Top. Weird Al Yankovic. Cindi Looper." Only at the end do we find that it's a sample of a Christian rights guy calling for the destruction of rock music. "Escape From Noise" is a funky disjointed song with the Weatherman screaming, and it's quite catchy despite its unpredictable pace.

"The Playboy Channel" at first seems to be just a funny little song about a man getting his orgasm wrecked by his cable going out. Listen to it enough times and you start to realize how true it is, how much we rely on cable, the man's orgasm just being a metaphor. It's disturbing how many time the Weatherman says "That sound is more important than your entire life. And it will stop you from having an orgasm on the Playboy Channel."

The first six songs are a barrage on your ears and after that we get into calmer fare like "Nesbitt's Lime Soda," an ode to the bottle of soda that was ruined by a fly. "Car Bomb" starts up the psychosis again. The incredibly antsy "Methods of Torture" tells how noise used to be used as a method of torture. "Time Zones" is about 4 minutes of a conversation from a radio call in show being constantly mixed up. They're talking about how terrifying it is that there are 11 time zones in the Soviet Union compared to the United States' measly 4 time zones. This album could really use a song like "Aluminum or Glass" from Dispepsi to anchor everything down, but Escape from Noise still holds up well.

If you've ever heard of Negativland, it's probably either because of the brilliant but ill-begotten (and legally destructive) "U2" single from 1991, or this album, their best selling and easily their most accessible. Eschewing some of the long-form works that dominate many of their previous and subsequent releases, this album probably has more song-length tracks than any other Negativland collection. Only the wonderfully ethereal "Time Zones" tops 5 minutes in length, and a couple clock in under 2. Among the gems in this collection are the opening "Announcement" (a wonderful jab at the concept of pop radio marketing), the surreal "Yellow Black and Rectangular", the irreverent "Playboy Channel", the audacious punk-rock romp "Car Bomb", and the aforementioned "Time Zones", which puts a sliced-and-diced call-in radio show discussion about the Soviet Union to brilliant effect.

Some albums are better (most notably A Big 10-8 Place), some are more precise in their satire, but none reach the level of accessibility that Escape From Noise accomplishes. Be sure to buy the 1997 Seeland reissue, not the 1987 issue from their estranged record label SST.

It is a mistake to buy any Negativland album for the music. Some of their experimental noise-fests do actually wind up working well, but this is rare. The real reason for buying Negativland is for the sheer experience. Negativland, with their myriad samples, hold a distorted mirror of the world up to the listener, forcing the more careful listener (most will just hear noise) to question society and its sacred cows.

The theme of this particular album is about how there is no escape from noise. In information theory, the higher the ratio of signal to noise, the more meaningful information you receive. This album is about how in modern american society, we are exposed to a lot more noise than signal. Part of the way they achieve this is by presenting quite a bit of noise themselves, while leaving in just enough signal for the careful listener to get the point. As a result, the message isn't as obvious or outright funny as their classic Dispepsi, but this album is still an enjoyable experience to those who want mind-expansion along with their pop.

This album is sure to impress. It's very non-traditional, so don't expect too many melodies to stick in your head after several listens. (Except maybe the Nesbitt's Lime Soda song.) Negativland uses interesting sounds and samples in strange and fantastic ways. Often humourous, often loud, always something new. Escape from convention!

This is possibly the most accessable Negativland release. I think it was their attempt to go "mainstream" but with Negativland, "There is no other possibility!"

Expertly crafted, all the snippets of found sound and noise are blended into unforgettable songs. Especially the song; "The Playboy Channel." In it, my favorite Clorox Cowboy, THE WEATHERMAN instructs how those horrible noises will mess up your "big O" while watching the Playboy Channel! Horray for the Weatherman to tell us that!

We get their sadarnic treatment of America's love of the gun. Also we get fantastic xylaphone playing in their psychedelic "Yellow, Black and Rectangular!" We get an eerie picture of the Soviet Union in Time Zones. After listening to it you will never forget there are 11 time zones there. "That's not funny. That's ridiculous!"

And it is here that they debut their "Killer Song," "Christianity is Stupid." It is the song they claimed was responsible for some axe murders, which the media believed and then made a touchdown with that football! It is also the song that they recently made into a movie-collage, "The Mashing of the Christ!" I hear that Mel Gibson wants to sue them over that little project!

Originally released by SST records, that record company sued Negativland over their little "U2" stunt! I hear that Negativland finally won rights to this album from SST, thus it is back on Negativland's private label, Seeland Records.

Although this song has been mentioned in a number of reviews the reason it is a stand out on it is because it is cutting and pasting a televangelist's words to state the exact opposite of the sermon. Hilarious. As was their follow up album "Helter Stupid" that purposely created a fake media scandal about the song inspiring suicides (a satire of the "satanic lyrics" in heavy metal moral panic in Reagan era America). Basically using cut and paste techniques that approached sampling, in a more punk sense than the Residents, Negativland were trolling (way before the internet and the term even existed)the music industry, its censors and the general repression and tedium of conservative era America at the time in a tongue in cheek sense. You could say each song was a "sound collage" but its better than that by far as the songs have a sense of coherence and wit. Of course it was a losing battle (the "warning stickers" of explicit lyrics on cd's, oh well) but the dyi sense of Negativland is very much to the point of what anyone can do nowadays on the internet with a sampler and a band page but way before any of that existed.

If you buy only one CD by Negativland, this is the one. I bought "Escape from Noise" years ago on vinyl and wore it out. It's good to hear it again. A related EP, "Helter Stupid,: is also recommended.

Feeling tired of the mainstream crapiness, I first heard about these guys through a long forgetten-about and never listened to CD compilation, of the "greatest dance songs off all time', which was just sitting in the basement. The only way it could have gotten there, is that my mom acquired years before as a freebe, when she worked at Borders.

Well anyway, the song that seemed the most different than he others was a group called "Negativland", and a song called "Christianity is Stupid." Well, that felt dangerous, so I popped it in, and heard hilarious satire. And for no real reason, I felt like checking them out, seeing maybe they're the next big thing for me. On the website, they had the banned "U2 Radio mix' as well as the longer version with the phone convrsatiion, and the whole "I have the evelope here" stuff. Both tracks I found hilarious beyond belief, especially hearing Casey Casem curse uproariously, to the backing track of u2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." And since U2 is one of the first bands I ever remmembering hearing along with the Beatles and George Therogood, thoe two songs have a special meaning to me, as alternatives to the first rock music I ever heard.

Well anyway, before getting this album, I saw a fe videos on Youtube such as the insane "Gimmie the Mermaid" that smaples Black Flag at the end. I hope I enjoy this on a different level than someone else my age would, such as knowing who Casey Casem is, the time-period this ws made, what these songs mean overall...

For this album, I found some of it random, and some brilliant. "Christianity Is Stupid", "Time Zones", and the opening narraration are my favorites. And the more I think about it, the more and more Negativland reminds me of another completely different and oscure group of guys - The Firesign Theatre. I mean, the opening narraration screams "Austin/Bergman/Ossman/Proctor."

For those who don't know, the Firesigns are a comedy team from the late 60's, and their latest album was 2003. They go hand in hand with Negativland, with they're very original parody of pop culture, the future, aliens, and definatley TV, as Negativland focuses on radio. Firesign were at the surface, completely insane, but in relaity, very clever and have some message in what they do, as does Negativland.

This is not appealing to fan of "My Chemical Romance", "Fergie" and whatever other trash is on the radio these days. But I don't think Negativland would prefer to be popular, but rather be found out by people who wanna hear something that's truly different, and requires some brains. People like me, and you if you are reading this.

This is the only complete album I've heard from Negativland, besides the U2 EP, but I'm definatley checking out Dispepsi, and whatever other classics they have. Communism is good.