The name "Negativland" could be thought of as a symbol for the land from which this music spews forth. This is suburban stream of consciousness, much in the vein of Mnemonists, but a bit more structured musically. This audio world is somewhat like the visual world of television, where scenes of guerrilla warfare or starvation are arbitrarily mixed with bra commercials and public service announcements for Gulf Oil. In this world, the juxtaposition of unrelated sounds is not only possible, it is a necessary and natural phenomenon. Thus, we hear some clunky folk-stylings on the guitar combined with the sounds of a kitchen timer, vacuum cleaner, grinder, and whatever else. This is a sound environment in which TV and radio spots have as much necessary prescence as the "songs" that come and go from this group. Typically, the group combines a few conventional band instruments with extraneous environmental sounds(the environment usually being a living room). This is a call for freedom from the asinine embodiments of life in the American material world. There are no obvious patterns to the LP; it's more or less a continuous venture, meant to be heard in it's entirety(or perhaps while the TV is on). Here a garage band, there a bizarre triptych of subconscious allusions and cosmic bloopers. It is thoroughly enjoyable, non-pedantic, non-political, and always interesting.
Their ability to avoid cliched structures permits the queerness of suburban experience---which is itself an existential clich* of its own--to peak loud and clear.
-Thom Holmes, Recordings Magazine
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