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FOR THIS WORLD…FROM THE LAST ONE:
NEGATIVLAND’S NEW ALBUM IS THE WORLD WILL DECIDE

 
NEGATIVLAND: The World Will Decide (CD)
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What is The World Will Decide?

What’s even worth remembering about last year?  Are you okay?  Would you like to be arrested?  What’s the exact number of cameras in your home?  Is failure enjoyable?  What is the problem, and will you need to understand the solution in order for it to work?  

Although entirely finished before disinfecting your groceries became a perfectly normal thing to do, The World Will Decide depicts a world where the technologies we use to live our lives have become difficult to tell apart from those things we recognize as being alive.  Or, as one of the many sampled voices on this work will assure you: we can really feel like we’re here.

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Is this a concept album?

The mirror image sequel to 2019’s True False, The World Will Decide turns the focus away from our very human inability to accurately define reality, and towards the technologies attempting to do a better job at it. But if sorting true from false seemed like a full time job back when all we had to keep track of was our own minds, life alongside the machines built to connect us only seems to multiply the uncertainties. On this album those uncertainties are made almost deliriously danceable: a netweb of densely sampled voices melting speech back down into music and back again, into what we can all agree are the real questions — Did that firefly really land on your finger? Is your food online? Does this app connect you to people, or replace them? Who owns your replica, and why are humans the ones now failing the Turing test? What’s entertaining about survival?

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David Wills aka The Weatherman, one of the living members of Negativland’s current lineup, returns as the lead vocalist on four more songs — including an extended argument with his own phone, as it repeatedly refuses to tell him whether or not it’s safe to go outside.  Is it even possible to define electro-magnetic harassment?  Am I a low risk person?  Is it ok if I just attend this protest in VR?  Is fear porn patriotic?  Is this a real sequence of musical notes?  How does this app use my thermal image to measure your honesty?  Do people have to die?  

Questions like these rarely have one answer, but Negativland’s new album does have a title.
And that title is: The World Will Decide.

  • The second of two interconnected albums, with complete lyrics included.

  • Guest artists on this record include: Prairie Prince (The Tubes, Byrne/Eno, XTC), Drew Daniel & M.C. Schmidt (Matmos), Ava Mendoza, Jem Doulton (Thurston Moore Group, Róisín Murphy), Nava Dunkelman, Steve Fisk (Pell Mell, Pigeonhed), Erich Hubner (Man or Astroman?, Cordero), Tom Dimuzio, Kyle Bruckmann, and Kristin Erickson (Blectum from Blechdom).

  • Continuing Negativland's return to songwriting, with four tracks 'sung' by The Weatherman (aka founding member David Wills).

  • Album cover and label paintings by long time Negativland collaborator Dan Lynch that continues the visual story that began with the artwork on True False.

  • Containing found sound tapes from the earliest years of the band (including dozens of samples that will be familiar to regular listeners of Over The Edge and early Negativland albums).

  • Composed, performed, produced, recorded, mixed and edited by Negativland.

  • European and US Tours to promote the album…someday!

THE WORLD WILL DECIDE is a tremendous step forward for a band that has always broken new barriers. The new normal never feels so real as when Negativland screams it at us.
— SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Negativland’s catalogue runs deep. Its records form a dastardly through line, along which the twentieth century’s cynical media environment and corporate-ad saturation lead to the group’s current target on THE WORLD WILL DECIDE: surveillance and the lack of self in an Internet hellscape.”
— THE NEW YORKER
 
 

The World Will Decide track listing:
1. Unlawful Assembly
2. Content
3. Before I Ask (Audio only on YouTube)
4. Why Are We Waiting
5. Create The Visitor
6. We Can Really Feel Like We're Here
7. More Data (Video)
8. I Didn't Know I Was Dead
9. Failure
10. Don't Don't Get Freaked Out (Video)
11. Anything Else
12. Attractive Target
13. Open Your Mouth (Audio only on YouTube)
14. Incomprehensible Solution
15. The World Will Decide

 
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Who's even in Negativland these days? Didn't half of you die a few years ago?

For this project Negativland consists of Mark Hosler, David Wills, and Jon Leidecker, as well as Peter Conheim and our dearly departed Don Joyce, Richard Lyons and Ian Allen. See our bio for more info.

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