Journey-Departure (1980)

Another awesome Journey album I have in my CD collection. Departure was a sign of Journey advancing into popularity as the 1970’s was over. I could say that Departure is a perfect mix of the grandiose atmospheres of 1978’s Infinity, the more mainstream approach of 1979’s Evolution, and the prog rock-oriented stuff you hear on Journey’s first three albums as a group, before lead vocalist Steve Perry joined. Yes, I have listened to this album, all 12 songs of it, and half of it is prog rock on a technical level.

I especially thought that the cover art was promising upon buying my CD copy of it. It shows a rainbow-colored scarab floating in space between a ringed Earth-like planet and a yellow moon. That means I thought this would be one of Journey’s more “transcendent” works. The album is also the home to really great mainstream rockers like “Anyway You Want It”, the bluesy, organ-driven “Walks Like a Lady”, and the driving groove of “Where Were You”. The places where I found more transcendent qualities were the heavenly organ and Taurus pedal-driven “People and Places”, the Boston-esque “Precious Time” (also including a little bit of phasing effects for your convenience!), and the 38-second ambient filler that is title track. I was reminded of Pink Floyd’s The Endless River when I was listening to the title track.

However, my least favorite track on the album is “Homemade Love”. It’s just because it uses too much cooking analogies backed by some of the hardest hard rock to describe making love, at which point they seemed incredibly forced. But, that doesn’t ruin the album for me.

 

Negativland-Negativland (1980)

A month ago, I posted an article about how the arena rock band Journey is related to the sound collage/Plunderphonics group Negativland. Now, it’s time for me to post an actual review of a Negativland album. That album is their 1980 self-titled debut album. This album I listened to on YouTube when someone uploaded the full thing, and Negativland themselves are busy working on a reissue of this album, mainly for an iTunes release along with the two albums that came after this one (this is what Negativland actually told me on their official Facebook page when I asked them when will the first three albums come out on iTunes). I get a lot of my music off of iTunes, and here’s what they told me on Facebook about the album’s cover art (I’ll explain it after):

“The 1980 release had 9000 vinyl and 6000 CD covers made over the years, all by hand, each one totally unique! We’ve never quite known how to translate that into a download. But we do have a big surprise planned related to this in the next year or so!”

The album’s releases on CD and vinyl had various handmade covers for each release, and the CD release included an insert containing a recipe for coffee toffee torte, which I included for this review.

Negativland, formed in Contra Costa County, California, were best known for using samples and electronics that conveyed messages related to politics, the music industry, copyright law, gun use, and radio programming. However, on the 1980 debut, this was home to a very different Negativland. This first version of Negativland was described by founding member Mark Hosler in an interview in Spinal Jaundice magazine in 1989:

“Our first record was in 1980. I was just graduating from high school when that came out. And a couple years previous to that we had started just messing around with a lot of loops and sounds and noises and tapes and stuff. We were in the suburbs, I really was not aware of what was going on in independent music. I wasn’t familiar with the more ‘classical’ experimental music history like John Cage, Stockhausen, Musique Concrete. I really don’t know why it is that with all the music we were listening to, that we said well, what we want to do is make these tape loops and turn on our oscillators and mix in the sound of the TV set and my mom in the kitchen baking a pie. You know, why are we doing this. It just seemed like that was what needed to be done.”

Mark Hosler and Richard Lyons, the two founding members of Negativland, recorded this album between late 1979 and mid-1980 when they were in high school at the age of 17. On board with them were David Wills, better known as The Weatherman, guitarists Peter Dayton and W. Kennedy M., a.k.a. Bill McFarland, and Joan Alderdice, who provided “bellbeating” on the album. The Weatherman introduced to Holser and Lyons the Booper, an electronic oscillator that he built in 1975 that was made out of a transistor radio that he circuit-bent and made into a noise machine. Many years prior, the Weatherman recorded tapes of his family, some of which you hear on this record. Negativland took their name from a song off of the 1972 self-titled debut album by Neu!, a German experimental Krautrock band who formed out of members of future techno innovators Kraftwerk. Neu! had largely influenced the project along with Faust, another Krautrock band from the 70’s that was more sound collage-oriented. The album was released on Seeland, an independent label set up by the band that also took their name from a Neu! song.

Here are the tracks, even though there are no actual track titles:

“#1”-A TV news broadcast plays along with sound effects treated with reverb. As the broadcast continues, a Cabaret Voltaire-style industrial jam starts, featuring echoey acoustic guitar, spooky synth bass, and a drum machine. The track ends with a tape recording of the Weatherman’s grandmother introducing the listener to Negativland (in a Firesign Theater-esque way), followed by a warped recording of what I think is a folk song. I can tell because I hear an acoustic guitar.

“#2”-Some faint conversation with a clock ticking. A Pink Floyd-style acoustic guitar melody plays, accompanied by various machine sound effects like a mechanical saw, a vacuum cleaner, and some more clock ticking.

“#3”-A droning electronic jam with synthesizer and a drum machine, playing in tune to a sample of a guy talking about a homicidal maniac. You also hear weird electronic noises, Captain Beefheart-esque clarinet, and more TV samples. The track ends with an interview with a fascist, anti-immigrant guy.

“#4”-A low rumbling wind sound effect leads into a strange, squeaky clarinet improv, like the Captain Beefheart track “Hair Pie: Bake 1”. A dog barks later on, and a startling Hammond organ noise appears to end the song. This may have been performed on a Hammond organ because it sounds all mechanical instead of being synthetic.

“#5”-Starts with the sound of banging and a lit-up fuse, as if like on a bomb, leading to a strange, futuristic sound collage improv filled with echoed Hawaiian slide guitar, acoustic guitar, clanging, banging and chiming percussion, synthesizer noises, backwards voice samples, distorted arena rock-style electric guitar soloing, video game-like sound effects, and the Booper.

“#6”-A new wave-style drum machine rhythm opens the track, along with droning synth, voice samples playing in tune to the music, and baroque-sounding viola. The Weatherman recites a bizarre spoken word segment in his very silly voice (it’s his natural voice!). It suddenly cuts into a short collage of electronic effects and voice samples.

“#7”-A short collage of TV samples (one of them has some classical music in the background, but is a lot noticeable when listening with headphones), droning industrial synth bass, and warbling noises coming from the Booper.

“#8”-Blurbing Booper noises appear, playing along to a desolate Jandek-style tune with deep acoustic guitar and bleating, emotionally-dissolute vocals.

“#9”-The majority of this song is a random secession of samples of singing schoolchildren, electronic noises, TV samples, and an organ chord. It ends with the sample of a schoolteacher talking to her students about silent E’s at the end of words.

“#10”-Beginning with a field recording, this leads into one of the two song-oriented pieces on the album. The song consists of a new wave tune with drum machine, electronically-distorted electric guitar, the Booper, clanking percussion, horns, and whispery vocals singing a love song.

“#11”-Out-of-tune trumpet-like synth noises starts the track, along with French voice samples and clarinet. It also has a tape loop of a Southern voice that continues throughout the rest of the track, along with a droning organ note, clanging cymbals and percussion sounds.

“#12”-A loud, distorted tape loop of a man saying the Hail Mary and a woman saying the Rosary.

“#13”-A collage of TV samples, polar wind sound effects, a continuous droning synth note, weird electronic sound effects (as like from an old transistor radio), CB radio samples, a helicopter, and a family tape from the Weatherman.

“#14”-Ambient synth sounds accompanied by a weird teen voice sample, leading to a collage of “wub-wub” synth bass, electric zapping noises, voice samples, and what sounds like a bird chirping. It ends with another collage consisting of distorted electronic noises and a TV sample of a woman talking about a book.

“#15”-The second song-oriented piece on the album. Beginning with a faint field recording, followed by some coughing, leading to a piece with bluesy acoustic guitar accompanied by experimental acoustic string sounds (maybe a duel between Peter and W.?), which sounds like someone placed his hand on a guitar’s strings against the body, thus producing weird muted sounds. You can also hear some more coughing, along with some very faint TV samples that are noticeable with headphones at a good volume level. I notice these because I have Beats headphones. Yes, they are the Dr. Dre headphones! The song cuts off abruptly at the end.

“#16”-An ominous chant leads into spacey synthesizer noises. Afterwards comes a collage of TV samples that were all thrown into and edited with a mixer. You can also hear a strange noise improvisation performed on the Booper.

“#17”-A strange improvisation featuring a slow drum machine rhythm, mechanical acoustic and electric guitar sounds, manipulated voice samples, and squeaky, high-pitched electronic sounds. You also hear some stretching noises by the end.

“#18”-A collage of electronic sounds, water sounds, and another family tape from the Weatherman.

“#19”-A collage that is more chaotic than tracks 5, 7, 13, and 16 combined! This starts off with an electronic alarm sound effect, leading into a piece with TV samples, loud synthesizer noises, samples of children, a phone conversation tape from the Weatherman, and a vinyl record being played (I can tell because of the background music and the audio quality, as you can hear some hissing). Afterwards, it fades out into a piece with CB radio recordings, lo-fi samples of people talking about Coca-Cola and Pepsi (accompanied by an old recording of opera music) and a sample of a small child having fun. The track ends with an ambient-sounding reverb effect.

“#20”-The final track has electronic cricket noises playing along to samples from old records; one coming from a classical music record (I think), and the other being a record talking about what real parakeets sound like. The album ends with artificial bird sound effects produced on a synthesizer.

To me, this is Negatviand’s finest work of the 1980’s, and I can’t wait for it when this gets on iTunes next year!