Negativland - Thigmotactic

Negativland - Richard Nixon Died Today

Negativland - Lying On The Grass

Negativland - Two Light Bulbs Flickering

Schizophrenic, ribald, holy – Negativland’s Thigmotactic is the sort of album that turns English majors and music nerds into gooey piles of adjective spewing humanity. The group can be described in much the same way – founded in 1979, the collective is famous for a number of “culture-jamming”-type publicity stunts: packaging a 1987 album with bumper stickers reading “Car Bomb” (preempting This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb by 10 years), creating phony press releases claiming that an axe murderer was inspired by their first album, and almost being sued out of existence in 1991 after releasing an album called U2 which extensively sampled both U2 and radio personality Casey Kasem.

Negativland’s musical compositions tend to follow similar avenues, using extensive sampling and found audio in sound collages to play with the public’s perceptions of what makes music original. While their last album, 2005’s No Business, is built exclusively from samples of other people’s music, Thigmotactic represents Negativland’s return to a slightly more pop aesthetic.

Their first track, “Richard Nixon Died Today” weaves audio from Nixon’s speeches between booming drums and a soaring vocal chorus. As the song continues, comically over-the-top piano notes (they wouldn’t sound out of place in the Top Gun soundtrack) seem to parody the epic sound of bands like Arcade Fire or Wolf Parade.  It’s a fun opening, but Thigmotactic really starts to show it’s brilliantly inspired soul with “Lying On The Grass,” the second track, which features a chorus reminiscent of the surrealist-derived Exquisite Corpse technique:

Like a raven and a crow

fighting over a pinecone

lying on the grass

I wish that I could kiss your ass

At times, the entire album seems built from that cut-up technique; while all Negativland’s songs tend towards a head nodding electronic pop sound, there’s very little to tie one song to another. Take, for example, track nine, “Influential You,” an almost painfully unlyrical mixture of folk and experimental music. From that track’s acoustic guitar heavy sound, Negativland transition to track 12, “Pork In The Store,” which is reminiscent of The Knife (or, briefly, The Faint) – heavy drum machines and synth, tremblingly heartfelt vocals, and a return to the soaring compositions heard in Thigmotactic’s first track. Of course, track 13 drops that style entirely, bringing in almost two minutes of bouncy electronic beeps, boops, and noodling.  And then, track 14 moves towards a less sparse version of The Book’s musical territory.  Made of 17 less than three minute tracks (most of the songs are closer to two), Thigmotactic is closer to a jumble of hilarious ideas than a single album.

Some listeners may see the album’s lack of cohesion as a flaw. Personally, the 17 tracks of high weirdness which make up this thing feel like a soothing balm applied directly to my ADD addled soul. I’ve included three tracks from the album at the top of this review: give them a listen, but don’t imagine they represent anything close to Thigmotactic’s true scope.