Negativland

It’s been 24 years since Bay-area sound terrorists Negativland released their third album, A Big 10-8 Place. In the context of the band’s discography, this record is often seen as the point where the better-known trajectory of the group — the media infatuation, intellectual property infringement and social criticism — first began to coalesce into the abrasive and often humorous anti-pop collage that would earn Negativland so much notoriety on their next album, 1987’s Escape from Noise. Listening to this album over two decades later, what is most striking is just how abstract it was for its time. A few of the group’s overly ironic, folksy agit-pop moments abound and these lyrical passages are what sound most dated. But their more experimental sound collages, which make up more than half of the album, still sound as fresh as the day they were recorded. This reissue also comes with a bonus DVD featuring the band’s first full-length video, "No Other Possibility.”