The Evolution Control Committee

"...many musical observers trace the official beginnins of the British bootleg scene to The Evolution Control Committee, which in 1993 mixed a Public Enemy a cappella with music by Herb Alpert." - The New York Times

"Dan Rather becomes AC/DC's frontman, our nation's anthem is turned into a freakin' bologna commercial and you'll love every second of it. ... inspired surrealism that's funny, yet somehow thought provoking." - CMJ, 2003

"Some blame 'The Whipped Cream Mixes' -- ECC's 1993 7" that fused Public Enemy with Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass -- for spawning the computer-collage "mash-up" movement. ... 'Rocked By Rape' [is] the money shot on this long-brewing second album, which turns garage-sale detritus, voice-mail jabber, and pop shrapnel into a musical comedy record where the absurd and the sophomoric duke it out." - Entertainment Weekly, 9-May-2003

"... ECC mines an array of sounds and voices -- from an assertiveness-training record to messages on the group's own answering machine -- to create something new and relevant out of the pop-culture ether. It's successfully fun and artful, a difficult combination to execute well." - Magnet, Jun/Jul 2003

"...anything audibly perceptible is ground up into tiny units, letters perhaps, and then rearranged to form words and sentences in the language of pastiche audio composition. ECC, like most groups working under the rubric of "Plunderphonics", tend to use this language critically. The aural output (commercials, monologues, the evening news) is meant to mockingly highlight both the beneficial and destructive potential of mass media." - dusted (Feature)

"The best of the nearly 30 tracks here ... combine recognizable riffs (Public Enemy, AC/DC) with lifted and twisted vocal tracks from self-help records, sermons, news broadcasts and the like. Some of the tracks run a little goofy, but the ones that work ... more than make up for the lesser attempts." - The Squid's Ear

"By releasing influential reconstructions like the 'Whipped Cream Mixes', a single combining Herb Alpert and Public Enemy that helped found the modern genre mash-up craze, they have garnered their own devoted, independent fan base." - Stylus

"... these fans of Negativland collage plunge the knife hilariously deep into anchor/stiff Dan Rather. Notorious for writing his own crude rhymes, the CBS hairpiece intones about 'fraudulent drug thugs' and 'hidden Nazis next door,' and The ECC splice it all into a wicked language poem, backed by an endless AC/DC drone." - Spin

"... the 1993 club hit 'Rebel Without A Pause' ... created by the group Evolution Control COmmittee, sounds as startling and amusing today as it did a decade ago and is still ripe with meaning." - salon.com

"The Evolution Control Committee is the epitome of everything that is Cool and Strange in the music world. Try imagining what Spike Jones, Bruce Haack and Negativland would sound like mixed into an audio blender ... From Napster Nuggets and inventions like the Thimbletron to threats from CBS ... The ECC is a tour de force in audio depravity and culture-jamming." - Cool & Strange Music Magazine