Negativland
Escape From Noise
Crítica del álbum
Compañía discográfica: SST Records
Fecha de publicación: 1999
Crítica del álbum
"Doors slam/People yell/Children scream/Sirens whine/Trucks rumble and roar/And rock music blares," as Negativland asks the musical question "Is there any escape from noise?"
Escape from Noise is a concept album about noise, but it's more than a sound-effects record for the semiotics set. Many of the tracks feature obliquely satirical vignettes; on others, collages of found sounds are laid over mechanistic backing tracks. You can trace Negativland's lineage back through "Revolution No. 9," the Mothers of Invention and Stockhausen's musique concrète. The seventeen cuts average about two minutes long, and they teem with little snapshots of sound – no wonder this profoundly weird and funny antirecord took four years to make.
There are tracks that refer to such political hot potatoes as nuclear power, handguns and the Soviet threat, but mostly Escape from Noise deals with consumerism and pop culture. It starts off with a Big Brotherish announcer intoning, "The cut that follows is the product of newly developed compositional techniques based on state-of-the-art marketing-analysis technology." The song turns out to be a robotic rhythm track littered with cartoon sound effects from the depths of our Saturday-morning collective unconscious. In "Michael Jackson," a TV-preacher type recites an exhaustive litany of million-selling rock groups whom he then damns to hell for making rock music "directed specifically against children."
There is a certain sonic typecasting of the bizarre lineup of guest artists – Jerry Garcia plays chimes and makes "mouth sounds"; Jello Biafra flushes a toilet. Other guests are Mark Mothers-baugh of Devo, avant-garde guitarist Henry Kaiser and the Residents, who contribute "hoots and clanging." Other credited instruments include "bomb parts," "tiny metal banjo," "regular Booper," "shortwave," "halfspeed violin," "leaf blower" and "processed animals."
Perhaps it's best not to speculate about what would happen if you listened to this California mind zap on your Walkman. (RS 526)
MICHAEL AZERRAD
léelo en rollingstone.com