Gitar cuts up the culture

When I see something with “Seeland” records on it I get really excited, because that means the guys from Negativland are involved, and they’ve scored a 100 percent success rate with my earballs over the past twenty-something years. I’m a fan of the cut up (essentially, it’s media bites and bits remixed and rearranged) and Negativland are the Picassos of the genre. Gitar are pretty fun too.

Gitar’s Ellipse Elkshow and I Cut People are childhood friends who grew up in Evansville, Indiana. At some point, the story goes, these guys snapped and decided to suck up all the mass media pumped relentlessly their way, rearrange it to their liking and fling it back at the machine. Stitching things together thematically is the sound of the electric guitar, in all its phallic glory.

Best bits: “Helicopter Cruise” where Tom Cruise sounds like he’s smoked a nice big ball of black hash and jabbers nonsense about a helicopter, with madcap cartoon sound effects to punctuate the thought-gaps. “Stupid Ums” seems to have a little of both Le Tigre’s “They Want Us to Make a Symphony Out of the Sound of Women Swallowing Their Own Tongues” and Negativland’s own fantastic “Helter Stupid.”

If you know nothing about cut-up and you think you might wanna give the genre a listen, start anywhere with Negativland, get the fantastic The Droplift Project stuff and pick up Gitar’s “Stuffed” to make it a super-trifecta.