Negativland - IPSDESEPI (Seeland)

Listening to a Negativland album is something that everyone should experience at least once. Their best tracks are like listing to kids run riot in a candy store of media samples, where nothing is sacred. Taped conversations with corporate execs, the OJ Simpson trail, public service announcements and documentary TV are deftly mixed with MC Lyte, Ice-T and Burmese field recordings.

Negativland's little place in the musical history books is already assured, if only for having first coined the phrase "culture jamming" back in 1984 (when multimedia was a little known art-form) and later being sued by Island Records following a sampladelic art-prank on U2. But that was back in the days when U2 were sincere megalithic rock stars. Nowadays they're at pains to prove they listen to electronica, it's cool for everyone to use samples and the world has moved on. So where has that left Negativland?

The answer lies on this, their first LP for five years, a tongue-in-cheek exploration and full-blown degradation of one of the biggest threats to mankind. Not the bomb. Cola. IPSDESEPI is thirteen tracks of loops, snippets and snatches from multinational ad campaigns, all twisted and blended back into a concept album of cultural commentary. Even the title of the LP has a pseudo-dangerous air. IPSDESEPI is an anagram of the proper name of the album, which had to be held back due to copyright restrictions. To discover the true title, consumers are invited to call the band's 'Word Of Mouth' phone-line for the "correct spelling and pronunciation".

Although copyright liberation makes for intriguing (nay brilliant) packaging it's music that you pay for when you buy this disc. And musically this album alternates between the band's best and worst sides. Tracks such as 'Why Is This Commercial?' and 'A Most Successful Formula' succeeds on their key strength - taking vocal snippets and commercial blipverts and playing them like a furious percussive show-down. But unfortunately this is interspersed with second rate country-styled songs on the same themes of corporate monsters and consumer manipulation. 'The Greatest Taste Around', 'Happy Hero' and 'Drink It Up' are the worst offenders here. But the techno style far wins out and by the closing tracks this album is as addictive as the saccharine sweet world-wide brand that it sets out to lampoon. 8/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine