Notes From the Road

I had a little six-hour drive yesterday, so got to investigate some new, old, and old/new music along the way:

New - The Arcade Fire are brilliant and talented. Unbelievably brilliant, incredibly talented. On their debut album Funeral, they never let you forget, even for one little second, how brilliant and talented they are. That aside, the music is very good. Extraordinarily dense and powerful, it falls stylistically somewhere between Talking Heads and REM, with a German Expressionist string quartet thrown in. The rhythmic philosophy is one of intense restraint, which proves to be exhausting - a bit like reading a whole book of Gerard Manley Hopkins out loud (dude: it's called an iamb - look into it). Highly recommended, but demanding.

Old/New - Best of Groove Armada is collection of hits from the London DJs Groove Armada. Whether they are an old or new act depends on your age - they've been around since the mid-90s. In contrast to The Arcade Fire, their music is incredibly undemanding, not to say stupid. Some of it is great fun, but on the whole I was disappointed. They're OK, but they ain't the Chemical Brothers (<-- fun website). Oh yeah, The Chemical Brothers - gotta get more of that.

Old - The GTA: Vice City soundtrack (box set) is all the 80's anyone needs. The less said about the music, the better. The CDs do include some radio ads from the game, including my favorite, for the Degenatron:

Man: The degenatron gaming system plays three exciting
games including Defender of the Faith, where you save
the green dots with your fantastic flying red square.

Kids: Cool!

Man: Monkey's Paradise, where you swing from green dot to
green dot with your red square monkey.

Kids: That's rad!

Man: And Penetrator, where you smash the green dots deep
inside the mysterious red square.

Kids: Wow!