Pitchfork

In early 2002, Negativland will release an album of new material tentatively titled Death Sentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak. This ambitious 40-minute album will attempt to capture the thrilling sound of Negativland's instruments while they're simultaneously crushed in a car accident. In keeping with Negativland's tendency towards crazy packaging, the CD will contain text, an art book and photos of junked cars-- sure to become collector's items. The text for the project has all been physically removed from cars at a wrecking yard, including people's personal papers that were left after the accident.

n Those of you more into old-school Negativland, there's something in the works for you as well: the band will be re-releasing the long-unavailable Over the Edge, Vol. 4: Dick Vaughn's Moribund Music of the 70s, which is widely regarded among their best albums. This radio broadcast was originally a cassette-only release on SST Records in 1990, but the new version is re-edited and expanded to include two discs that span over 2\xBD hours of material, featuring Dick Vaughn's prank phone calls, off-air moribund surveys, and musical tributes by Negativland. The new edition will be released on the band's own label, Seeland.

n Finally, Mark Hosler, a founding member of the band, recently appeared at an intellectual property law conference held at Duke University, where he presented his paper "Two Relationships to a Cultural Public Domain." Hosler's interest in the subject of intellectual property law came to fruition in 1990, when Island Records sued Negativland for copyright infringement over their song "U2," which featured a chopped-up version of the Irish pop band's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," interspersed with clips of Casey Kasem swearing. The situation later became the basis for the book Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2, which discusses intellectual property, fair use, and copyright law. In a fun way.