Lunedì 5 Nov 2007, 12:49

A mere few weeks after that "In Rainbows"-stunt by Radiohead, there's another "digital only"-album around the corner. And again you may choose whether you want to pay for it or not. It's "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust" (ha-ha) by Saul Williams, produced by Trent Reznor (which is, to speak the truth, the only reason why I actually came to learn of it). Even though I've never heard of Saul before and Hip Hop is not my most favorite genre in music (although I don't have anything against it, either), I paid the 5$ for it, because I thought some support wouldn't do any harm… and just to demonstrate that such a distribution can work even when you're not Radiohead. ;)

And… well… it's pretty decent. It shares somewhat the sound of the recent NIN-album "Year Zero"… which leaves you with the revelation that the YZ-sounds make a lot more sense in a Hip Hop- than in a rock-context… and with the outcome that "NiggyTardust" is a far, far better work. It does start to tumble a bit in the second half, though… and it feels like Saul and Trent put all the best material at the beginning of the tracklist (like the charming cover version of „Sunday, Bloody Sunday“). But all in all it's really not bad, and I could have spend my 5$ (or since I'm a European: 3,50€) for worse things. Even when I'm probably not going to listen to it all that much.

There's another album doing its frequent spins in my winamp… and it's Mirrored, the full-length debut by Battles. On first glance it's a bit hard to even describe their sound… but when you try to imagine guys like Squarepusher or Aphex Twin as rock artists, then you're pretty close to the idea. After all, this band isn't signed on Warp for nothing.

Anyway, it's a very addictive record… and Atlas has pretty good chances to make it to my personal „best songs of the year“-list. Happy aliens singing along to quirky guitar noises! How can anybody not like that? Sadly, the album is running a bit out of steam in the later tracks (Bad Trails even comes close to being tedious), but I don't want to take too hard on it. It's just too nice to hear something really fresh every once in a while.

A very pleasant album. Hope the band is going to stick around for a while.