''No Business'' is the tenth
album by the
sound collage band Negativland. While the songs encompass a variety of topics, the overarching theme of the album is
copyright issues, especially those pertaining to
peer-to-peer file sharing. Although the title track and especially the track "Downloading" are the only ones that explicitly relate to this topic, the rest of the album can technically be considered so, because they consist entirely of samples, unlike Negativland's other albums.
History
The album is especially unique in Negativland's body of work because it is their first to not contain any original sounds by Negativland, but use exclusively "stolen" sound. It does not come in a regular-sized
CD case. Instead, it comes in a flip-open package about the size of a book covered with images of copyrighted characters (again referencing copyright issues.) The package contains the CD and two other items: ''Two Relationships to a Cultural Public Domain'', a 49-page
essay book pertaining to copyright law; and a
yellow whoopie cushion with a
black copyright symbol on it, referencing the band's motto-of-sorts "N©!". The CD itself also contains a bonus
music video for an earlier track, "Gimme the Mermaid", which first appeared on ''
Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2''. The
surreal
Surreal may refer to:
*Anything related to or characteristic of Surrealism, a movement in philosophy and art
* "Surreal" (song), a 2000 song by Ayumi Hamasaki
* ''Surreal'' (album), an album by Man Raze
*Surreal humour, a common aspect of humor
...
video was created by then-
Disney animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images, known as frames, which give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, and video gam ...
Tim Maloney using his company's equipment during after-hours, and is the first-ever music video for a Negativland cut. One can load the CD on a
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
and check its contents to find the video.
The audio tapes used to create the song "God Bull" on this album (from
Disneyland's "
Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" attraction, one of many sets of tapes acquired from a former employee) would later inspire the animatronic Abraham Lincoln in the
Negativlandland exhibit, opened in September 2005, in Manhattan's Gigantic Artspace gallery. The audio used in the Lincoln statue, in contrast, comes from blooper tapes. The sound engineer telling Lincoln's voice actor what to do is left untouched, but Lincoln's own voice is edited into madness, conveying the image of a robot on the verge of breaking down.
The songs "Favorite Things" and "No Business" both had music videos made and released on the DVD ''
Our Favorite Things
''Our Favorite Things'' is a compilation DVD by the band Negativland, released on November 27, 2007. The original release date on October 23 was skipped due to a pressing error in the DVDs and the bonus CD, a collection of Negativland covers don ...
'' in October 2007, along with Negativland's other "hits".
Track listing
#"Old Is New" – 1:19
#"No Business" – 4:13
#"Downloading" – 9:51
#"Favorite Things" – 1:58
#"God Bull" – 4:59
#"Keep Rollin'" – 3:12
#"Piece A Pie" – 8:40
#"New Is Old" – 1:32
#"No Business Again" – 0:36
Video (available on CD): "Gimme The Mermaid" 4:42
References
External links
''No Business'' on NegativWorldWideWebland— "No Business" and "Downloading" available as sample tracks
*
''No Business'' at Allmusic
{{Authority control
2005 albums
Negativland albums