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Thu Jul 23, 2015, 05:42 PM Jul 2015

Negativland - "Time Zones" (RIP Don Joyce)

Here's a toast for all of us angry young Reagan-era punks who were looking for something else. Listening to Negativland helped cut through Cold War bullshit and suburban numbness.



http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/obituary/6641786/negativland-don-joyce-dead-71

Negativland's Don Joyce Dead at 71

"Six months after the loss of Negativland's Ian Allen at age 56, the experimental San Francisco outfit has lost another member. Don Joyce passed away at 71, according to a post on the band's Facebook page. Joyce died of heart failure in Oakland, CA.

Describing Negativland as "culture jammers," Joyce helped create music made out of re-appropriated material years before electronic and rap producers started doing the same. Although they never came anywhere close to mainstream success, the group's sonic collage proved incalculably influential and ahead of its time.

"In Don Joyce. Negativland had found its “lead vocalist” without even realizing they were looking for one," the band wrote of his pivotal role on Facebook. "It was Don who took the idea of reshaping previously recorded words – in a pre-sampling age – and ran with it to an extent and depth never before heard, and never equalled. “Recontextualization” became his weapon, with the 1/4” tape machine and razor blade his ammunition, and the radio “cart player" – an entirely forgotten piece of broadcast history using endless-loop tape cartridges, which he used until he death – his delivery system.

"When he and Negativland discovered their mutual love for “found” sounds, an intensely collaborative creative partnership was cemented. It continued non-stop for the ensuing decades, with Don endlessly scanning the airwaves of radio and television, along with his massive LP collection, for new material, day by day, week by week."

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