neurological dryer lint

got some reviews to spice up your burrito. many bothans died to bring you this information:

kmfdm - hau ruck

came out in september - i had no idea. i've been waiting for a disc of theirs to stack up to 1995's nihil - their peak, IMHO - and this one comes close, but it's not there. nihil had a good mix of sounds - every track seemed to come from a different angle. their last several albums since were pretty weak by comparison - xtort just plain sucked, symbols was alright, attak was monotonous, and WWIII is just now starting to grow on me. i miss when it was just sascha k and en esch on vocals - their new chick lucia kind of grates on me.

that said, hau ruck stacks up pretty well. it's funnier, less political, and far more creative than they've been in a while. the tracks are infectious - and the beats and guitar are just as good as ever. i feel like they could have put a handful more than 11 tracks on it, though.

trey anastasio - shine

grabbed this to test out the sony DRM rootkit on a live PC. i've really enjoyed some of trey's other solo stuff (seis de mayo and plasma) - it was innovative and thoughtful, like someone exploring different places and then writing songs about it.

shine is just sad by comparison. trey seems to have given up on writing interesting music. this stuff is like a boring crosby-stills-and-nash cover band trying to write original material. does trey think he's gonna pull off a dave-matthews-esque solo career? not with half-baked pop stuff like this. he sounds like a hippie trying to be seal. avoid at all costs.

i also recently grabbed rage's renegades disc as well as jack johnson's in between dreams - both of which i thought i wouldn't enjoy, and both of which ended up being surprisingly good. i thought i'd heard all i was going to from jack johnson... while talented and easy to listen to, there's not a lot of evolution going on in his work. his side projects always astound (see his cover of sublime's badfish/boss DJ for an example) but brushfire fairytales and on and on were simply like two different peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, one with grape and one with strawberry. dreams comes across with chunky peanut butter and on different bread... but the rhythms of the new material were good enough to warrant a pick up.

and normally i dig cover albums but i think i heard the title track of renegades so much and didn't like it that i figured the whole disc would be off. who knew they could pull off i'm housin' and kick out the jams with such tempest and feeling? and where is zack de la rocha's solo stuff already?

finally...

stewie griffin - the untold story

ugh. yawn.