On November 13, just days after the presidential election, Negativland is releasing their new album, The World Will Decide. The music video for the first single, "Don't Don't Get Freaked Out" is available to view now.
They've also got a new Chrome browser extension — interesting!
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.
Is this a concept album?
The mirror image sequel to last year'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 fulltime 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?
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?
image via Negativland
