The Good, The Bad And The Queen

Got a 93% on my first major Biology class exam. Woot!

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I just picked up a couple of new CDs. First is ’The Good, The Bad, And The Queen’



This is a side-project from Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz), one of my favorite musicians. He’s matured into a pretty damn talented artist, able to explore many musical genres, from indie rock to African music, hip-hop to latin music. The man has a wide interest in all music in general, and I really dig that. This is a ’supergroup’ of musicians he assembled: Paul Simonton (The Clash), Simon Tong (The Verve) and Tony Allen (Fela Kuti). It’s a delicate, mid-tempo record for most of its duration, with standout tracks like ’Herculean’, ’Behind The Sun’ and ’Green Fields’. But it ends with a great track called ’The Good, The Bad, And The Queen’, a 7-minute piece which ends with an outstanding psychedelic rock guitar freakout jam session. I’ll have to post something separately about this last track.



I caught up with Nine Inch Nails’ ’Year Zero’. I’m also a big fan of Trent Reznor. Also think he’s a very talented musician. It’s interesting to contrast him with Damon Albarn. Two very gifted musical artist working in different genres and with different instruments. I consider Reznor to be a master of electronic/industrial music, because what he does with electronic instruments and computer sequencers is art. This one was released last April, but because I was too busy, I just couldn’t find time for it. From the few listens I’ve given it, standout tracks include ’Survivalism’, ’Me, I’m Not’, and ’The Great Destroyer’. Reznor’s music has gotten very nuanced, and if you’re expecting the loud, hard rock monuments he build in masterpiece records like ’The Downward Spiral’ and ’The Fragile’, you’ll be dissapointed. I don’t much care for the track ’Capital G’, which is your obligatory ’let’s criticize George Bush’ song (I don’t like Bush much myself, but I think there’s something cliched about music created directly to attack him) But a Trent Reznor record still stands as a must-listen for me in this era of borish nu-metal, annoying neo-punk, and the crap commercial radio plays.

Trent has actually released a new 2-Cd set of instrumentals called ’Ghosts I-IV’, which is available online and you can download at the NIN official site. I’ve not had time to check it out yet, but I’m hoping to do so very, very soon.