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Illegal Art exhibit update:

Washington, DC >> Exhibit @ Resource Center for Activism & Arts, April 29 thur June 7. Opening is Friday, May 2, 6 pm. Admission is free.

Philadelphia >> Friday, April 11, 7 pm - Illegal Art Video at the Lost Film Fest. Carrie and Alexandra will be there to "represent."

Boston >> Sunday, May 18, 8 pm - Illegal Art Video at the River Gods

San Francisco >> at SF MOMA Artists Gallery in July 2003

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Plagiarhythm Nation v2.0
The Evolution Control Committee

It's been 7 years since the last Evolution Control Committee album, Double the Phat and Still Tasteless. Not that Mark Gunderson et al. have been slacking off in the last 7 years. Far from it! They released two wonderful and influential singles (the "Whipped Cream Remixes," the Public Enemy/Herb Alpert mix which nearly single-handedly sparked the mash-up/bootleg craze of the past couple of years; and "Rocked By Rape," the Dan Rather vs. AC/DC mix), and discovered Napster Nuggets, a relatively new and extremely valuable asset in the culture jammer's toolkit. The ECC has also been playing live shows (showing off their new sample-triggering hardware, the Thimbletron), and making new tracks available on their Website now and again.

In fact, one of the first things that'll strike faithful ECC followers about the new album, Plagiarhythm Nation v2.0, is that all of the best tracks on the CD have been available at some time or another through the ECC Website. So it's quite likely that the 1% of the ECC's fans that have been tirelessly downloading every MP3 and RealAudio offering won't find much new in this album.

But the 99% who haven't been doing so will find a collection of amazing sonic appropriations that are among the ECC's best work. "Rocked By Rape" is here, as well as "I Want A Cookie," an appropriation from an anger management seminar which has an extremely catchy refrain: "I want a raise/I want to go home/I want sex/I want a cookie." The "Breakfast"/"Lunch"/"Dinner" trilogy is also here, sounding better than ever. ("Hamburger! Hamburger! Hamburger, hamburger, hamburger!") The ECC's second foray into Public Enemy sampling, "No Time For Yes," is on here as well (although the version on this CD has been tarted up with a few too many samples; I much prefer the simpler version that was on the ECC site a year or two ago).

Plagiarhythm Nation is the ECC's first release that has a chance of getting some serious distribution; they've hooked up with Negativland to release the CD on the Seeland label, which means the album will be in stores nationwide, thanks to Seeland's distribution by Mordam. So the gospel of the ECC ("Copyright Violation For The Nation," as it says on their Website) may be spread far and wide with this album. It should be fascinating to see what results from the implicit message to listeners within Plagiarhythm Nation: Copyright violation *is* your best entertainment value.

Plagiarhythm Nation is currently available from the Mordam Website, and should be in your local Cool Record Store this week.

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