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NEGATIVLAND’S 1980 DEBUT ALBUM REISSUE
46th ANNIVERSARY LIMITED EDITION OF 1000 VINYL COPIES!
STARTS SHIPPING ON OCTOBER 30th.
PRE-ORDER IT NOW
HERE’S A QUICK OVERVIEW OF WHAT’S INCLUDED WITH YOUR PRE-ORDER. SCROLL DOWN FOR LOTS MORE DETAILS.
Your copy will be one of 1000 vinyl copies, each with a unique handmade one-of-a-kind front and back cover (to be sold in four batches of 250 each)
Hand-numbered and hand-stamped (underneath the front cover)
Mailorder only, not available in stores
Remastered from long-thought-lost master tapes
Seven unreleased Negativland rarities from the same era as this album. 34 downloadable minutes of bonus noises, music, and cooking conversations that you’ve never heard before
40 page making of/ track-by-track-breakdown magazine
Fancy full color LP inner sleeve
Remastered CD version in gatefold jacket
Album download in your choice of format
Printed reproduction of twelve page ASI questionnaire/ script (how Negativland met)
Downloadable PDF of the first 250 album covers, front and back. Eventually all 1000 covers will be available to download.
Downloads of high resolution wallpaper samples to use as wallpaper sample wallpaper for your smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer’s wallpaper. You can grab those right now if you go HERE.
Comes in heavy duty crystal clear 5 mil protective sleeve
The first batch of 250 copies begins shipping on October 30, 2026. The second batch of 250 will ship in January 2027, and the rest later in 2027.
Note: On October 30th there will be a separate album-only Bandcamp version available for those of you who want to hear this for free or for $10, cuz we know this fancy version ain’t cheap.
HEAR THIS ALBUM CORRECTLY FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!
Carefully remastered by Thomas Dimuzio/Gench Studios and Negativland from a meticulous digital transfer by Red Channel, this reissue is created from long-thought-lost original stereo master tapes that were found buried in our archives after the death of Negativland member Don Joyce.
We barely knew what we were doing back in 1980 when we first mastered this thing, so, to our ears, the record now sounds like many coats of aural paint have been stripped away, and it has a wider stereo image.
100% HANDMADE ONE-OF-A-KIND COVERS!
Like all past versions of this album on both vinyl and CD, each cover is 100% one-of-a-kind, handmade by Negativland from carefully trimmed original pictures that were cut out of late 50s/early 60s homemaking and home improvement magazines, and wallpaper samples cut out from 70s/80s wallpaper sample books. No two front or back covers are alike, with the front cover pics getting adhered using archival quality adhesive, and the completed black panel, trimmed wallpaper, and printed credit sheet, all getting attached using double stick tape. We’ll be posting all of the covers here as they get completed. Scroll down to see the first 250 covers.
Hand numbered and hand stamped in a hidden spot (hint: lift the front flap), this comes in a heavy duty 5 mil crystal clear protective sleeve (another hint: lift the back flap to read the name of your wallpaper).
From 1980 to about 1991 we made 9000 of these covers for vinyl, and from the early 90s until 2000 we made 6000 of these covers for a CD version. This reissue will bring the total number of vinyl copies to 10,000.
Limited to 1000 copies to be sold in four batches of 250 each (cuz these are a totally insane amount of effort to make). Once these are gone, that’s it.
RICHARD HELPED MAKE SOME OF THESE NEW COVERS!
Some of the front cover images and back cover wallpaper used to make these new album covers were cut out and trimmed by now deceased founding member Richard Lyons, many while he was in hospice with the nodular melanoma that would eventually take his life. The rest were cut out by Mark.
A CD VERSION?? YES, BUT IT’S COMPLICATED!
When this album was first made (long before CD's and streaming), we decided that there would never be a standard mass produced version for sale, and that the only way it would ever be available as a physical object for sale would be with one-of-a-kind covers. When we made a CD version in the 1990s, that, too, had handmade one-of-a-kind covers. So, all of these decades later, we are not going to second guess our original concept (sorry!), and this remastered "mass produced" CD version is intended as a bonus gift to you that only comes with the vinyl (so you can have your own digital hardcopy in addition to the LP version, and we’ll probably send some CDs to radio stations for possible airplay). While the CD version will not be for sale separately, please scroll down for a way to hear it…..for free! Each copy of this reissue will come with unique download codes for you to download both the album and the 34 minutes of bonus stuff.
TRACK-BY-TRACK BREAKDOWN!
Comes with a 40-page 11” x 11” magazine that includes deep dive interviews with founding Negativland members Mark Hosler and David Wills about the origins of the group, and the making of the album. From the depths of their fading memories, this includes an excruciatingly detailed track-by-track breakdown of the entire album, lots of photos, and the reproduction of a hand-written 1980 letter from Richard about the making of the album covers.
HOW WE MET!
Reproduction of the ridiculous twelve page Audience Studies Incorporated telemarketing questionnaire/script that Mark, David and Richard were using on the job the week they all first met, and that Mark got fired from two weeks later.
34 MINUTES OF BONUS AUDIO!
34 downloadable minutes of previously unheard music! No fluff! All good!
1. The Poppy Seed Tape (3:10)
2. Untitled Bass Pulse Experiment (2:36)
3. As Toilet Water Moves (2:21)
4. Guana Pig (3:20)
5. Sue Ridgewater (5:31)
6. 180-G Home Experiment Version (10:34)
7. Spark Machine/Stupid Song (6:05)
Track one is the kitchen conversation basis of our debut album's original insert (now as an inner sleeve for the 2026 vinyl reissue), tracks two through four are from late ‘79/early ‘80 and didn't end up on our first album, track five is a live performed song on our Over The Edge radio show in early 1982, track six is an audio experiment from 1974 of what would eventually become side two of our "A Big 10-8 Place" album in 1983, and track seven is us live at an art gallery in SF, CA in 1981 doing something rather dangerous with high voltage sparks, and then the performance segues into what would later become the opening theme song of "A Big 10-8 Place."
TWO COLOR LABEL!
A second color has been added to the black and white LP label art. Fancy!
FULL COLOR COFFEE CAKE!
The original crudely printed Coffee Toffee Torte recipe insert (along with the transcribed Poppy Seed conversation on the reverse side) is now a full-color reproduction of the original stained recipe itself, and is on a heavy weight inner sleeve instead of an 8.5 x 11 insert.
** PRE-ORDER. WE WILL BEGIN SHIPPING THIS FIRST BATCH OF 250 ON OCTOBER 30TH. A SECOND BATCH OF 250 WILL SHIP IN JANUARY 2027, AND THE REST LATER IN 2027.
THE PRICE!
You might think that $100 seems like a fair price for all of this stuff. Or you might think it’s kinda high. The amount of time, effort, and money it’s taken us to make this final batch of one-of-a kind works of art, and all of the elaborate bonus materials, is beyond insane, and was a fifteen year long effort, interrupted by various group members dying and/or nearly dying, family members dying, floods, crippling levels of depression, etc. You’ll be a “mini-patron-of-the-arts” in your support of Negativland if you buy this labor of love from us. THANK YOU! (but keep scrolling if you can’t afford it and still want to hear the music)
THE QUESTION WE THINK EVERYONE IS GOING TO BE ASKING US!
“Can I pick out the cover I want?”
We tried (and tried), but could not figure out a way to make that request practically or affordably work. Rest assured that expert calloused hands at Seeland Records Mail Order HQ will lovingly pick out a handmade cover just for you, and we’ve worked extra hard to make sure that every cover is extra great. We’ll slowly be posting all 1000 front and back cover images from this reissue on this page so you can eventually enjoy them all.
The first batch of 250 covers are below.
OKAY, BUT I CAN'T AFFORD THE VINYL AND YOU ARE NOT SELLING THE CD, AND I STILL WANT TO HEAR WHAT THIS VERSION SOUNDS LIKE!
We’ve got you covered! We are making the album audio and a pdf available on Bandcamp for $10. Or just hit “play” on that page and you can hear it for free! Need a CD version cuz you still have your old car/ laptop/ boombox/ refrigerator that has a working CD player in it? Download the WAV files from Bandcamp and burn as many CD-Rs as you like!
WILL IT BE STREAMING?
Maybe…at some point…? If the vinyl sells out, we might eventually add the album to all the usual criminal cabal streaming services. (And just a reminder - if you listen to music via any streaming subscription service, the artists you listen to and enjoy are being paid a homeopathic fraction of a penny for each stream, i.e. almost nothing. It truly is a criminal cabal!).
FIRST 250 FRONT COVERS OUT OF 1000
FIRST 250 BACK COVERS OUT OF 1000
Digital transfer and splice repair by Red Channel, remastering by Thomas Dimuzio/Gench Studios, lacquer cut by John Golden, vinyl pressing by Citizen Vinyl, CD pressing by A to Z Media, reissue graphics and design by Shawn Wolfe/Negativland, video and video editing by Jennifer Bennett, Steev Hise, Mark Hosler, David Wills and Richard Lyons, web design by Jennifer Bennett/Negativland, and front and back cover photography by Jennifer Bennett. Thanks also to Sharon Jue, Ulf at Escape From Noise in Stockholm, and Chris Bailiff for helping this come back to life.
