LOGANMIX2001: Everything Hits At Once

2001 in a nutshell: The White Stripes caused such a scandal with the instrumentally sparse White Blood Cells that some random dude on the internet went all Phil Spector and unsolicitedly added base-lines to the entire album. It is a pity that music fan-edits never caught on.

Top 10 [with the occasional comments]:


10. Ladytron - 604

9. Four Tet - Pause

8. The Strokes - Is This It?

7. New Order - Get Ready

Ready for some iconoclasm? Get Ready is New Order's best album, front to back. No qualifiers. Sure, it may not have the relevance or dizzying highs of earlier efforts, but deep cuts like the Massive Attack circa Mezzanine styled "Vicious Streak" and the acoustic(!) "Run Wild" make Get Ready the most consistent record in the No catalogue. And it rocks -- not necessarily a descriptor that first comes to mind when describing New Order. Unsurprisingly, the only weakness is Bernard Sumner's lyrics which more than a few times slide uncomfortably from innocuously vague (i.e. "Close Range" : "How can I ever make you understand / you've got the world right in your hands.") to distracting clunky (i.e. "Crystal" : "Here comes love / it's like honey / you can't buy it with money.") But I guess that is a part of the New Order charm, particularly as Sumner has slipped into the narrative persona of Old Uncle Barney with his pearls of avuncular wisdom for naive up-and-comers. And well, the less said about the Billy Corgan and Bobby Gillespie cameos, the better. But I challenge any of you to put on "Slow Jam" and not nod along in agreement with pint in hand to the rousing chorus that might be the perfect summation of the entire New Order discography: "To hit enough to miss / I can't get enough this."


6. Spoon - Girls Can Tell

5. Björk - Vespertine

4. Tim Hecker - Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again

Structured ambient might seem like an odd contradiction of terms. Traditionally, ambient focuses on tone and atmosphere; it is the kind of music that envelops you like a descending fog: incidental and aimless. Structured ambient, in contrast, conveys the impression of being crafted, of having some diffuse narrative or meaning. While Brian Eno famously categorized ambient music as inducing calm and a space to think, Tim Hecker is more interested in investigating geographical and emotional frontiers through texture and glitch. Listening to Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again is like overhearing a stranger scanning radio frequencies on an ancient transistor radio, only to linger briefly on melodies buried among the interference. A distorted snippet of a pop song and Regis Philbin's voice (yes, that Regis Philbin) are the only reminders of a nudiustertian world among a wilderness of static.


3. Stars Of The Lid - The Tired Sounds Of

2. The Faint - Danse Macabre

The 2009 Ladytron and The Faint co-headlining tour was a fitting capstone to the 00's synthpop revival as the two bands were the veritable Darwin and Wallace of the retro-futurism movement. But while Ladytron were situated in England, which never forgot electronic pop music (Blur's "Girls & Boys" was released at the high-water mark of grunge), The Faint had everything working against them: they were stuck in Omaha making new-wave throwbacks during the 90s (need I mention that Conor Oberst was also briefly a member of the band?). Perhaps the bands' respective musical environments had other unintended consequences. Ladytron's first two albums feel like singles collections masquerading as albums (you could lop off most of the backhalf of 604 and not miss a thing) - a natural byproduct of England's more thriving CD single culture. Danse Macabre, in contrast, is a taught and conceptually focused album, clocking in at just 9 songs and 35 minutes. Somebody told me the album was loosely based off Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. Although I can find no evidence to corroborate this story, I like to think the rumor is true because Danse Macabre finds Todd Baechle's lyrics at their most fertile: instead of fixating on bodily functions, he sublimates his sexual impulses through imagery of modernist decadence and the death drive. Tragically, the same cannot be said about the woeful follow-up album. Just as the synthpop revival reached its chart-topping nadir in 2004 with The Killer's "Somebody Told Me," The Faint returned with the embarrassing and cluttered Wet From Birth, annihilating any hope the band would rescue the movement from Brandon Flowers. Meanwhile, Ladytron disappeared from the scene only to reemerge triumphantly a few years later after rediscovering guitars.


1. Radiohead - Amnesiac

On my 19th birthday, I bought the special edition of Amnesiac. It is a curious artifact: a red hardback book (just like the one on the album cover) with a penchant for getting lost. Never quite fitting in with the rest of my jewel cases, the book would go missing for years on end. Usually it would reappear during a big move along with all of sorts of other totems and fetishes from the past. Intentionally or not, the book has formed a harmonious unity between content and form: Thom Yorke himself best described the sound of Amnesiac as "like finding an old chest in someone's attic with all these notes and maps and drawings and descriptions of going to a place you cannot remember."

Let's go down the waterfall, think about the good times and never look back:

LOGANMIX2001: Everything Hits At Once

1. Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks - The Rapture [Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks]
2. Fell In Love With A Girl - The White Stripes [White Blood Cells]
3. The Modern Age - The Strokes [Is This It?]
4. Juxtaposed With U - Super Furry Animals [Rings Around The World]
5. One More Time (Radio Edit) - Daft Punk [One More Time Single]
6. Romeo (Radio Edit) - Basement Jaxx [Romeo Single]
7. Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz [Gorillaz]
8. I Might Be Wrong - Radiohead [Amnesiac]
9. Another Breakfast With You - Ladytron [604]
10. Glass Danse - The Faint [Danse Macabre]
11. Emerge - Fischerspooner [#1]
12. (This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan - Dntel [Life Is Full Of Possibilities]
13. It's Not Up To You - Bjork [Vespertine]
14. Crystal - New Order [Get Ready]
15. Prog - Pinback [Blue Screen Life]
16. Following Through - The Dismemberment Plan [Change]
17. The Weight Of My Words (Four Tet Remix) - Kings Of Convenience [Versus]
18. Everything Hits At Once - Spoon [Girls Can Tell]

Tech Tip: Battery Life

Rechargeable batteries power all of the electronic devices I use most: My camera, laptop, cell phone, and even my beard trimmer. We've all had devices whose batteries have lost their charge capacity over time, some much more quickly than others. With a bit of care, it's possible to extend the lives of these batteries much longer than you may think. For basic guidance, Apple has a great set of maintenance and care instructions on their site. (While that particular page is specifically about notebook batteries, the information is applicable across the board.) For those looking to really push the limits of a battery's lifespan, there are a few tricks of the trade that you won't find on the Apple site.

In case you're wondering just how much of a difference this kind of maintenance can make, my MacBook Pro is a great example. I'm particularly anal about caring for my battery, but at nearly six months old, my laptop actually holds more of a charge than it did the day I took it out of the box. If you have a Mac laptop, you can use this tiny application to see how your battery is doing. If your score is lower than you'd hoped, don't worry! You can actually improve the capacity of your battery by following the steps below.

The most important thing to remember about batteries is that they need to cycle the electrons they store in order to maximize their capacity over time. You can think about it like the glass of water you keep next to your bed: You probably don't drink the whole glass over the course of a night, but if you just keep adding fresh water to what's left over, the whole glass of water is going to get nasty over the course of a couple of days. It's much better to dump out the leftovers and start over with as fresh a glass as possible. In other words, let your computer die before you plug it back in. Waiting until you see the low battery warning isn't enough: Let it die completely. And once you plug it in, it's best to let the battery fully charge before it's unplugged. The more strictly you follow these rules, the longer your battery will last.

If you want to get the absolute most out of your battery, you can take steps to drain it even more than it typically will with normal use. As a security feature, your laptop will use what it deems to be its last bit of juice to safely store everything you're working on and begin to hibernate. This minimizes the chance of data loss as a result of sudden power failure. It's a handy feature if you're working on an important document, but it also means that your battery seldom cycles the electrons stored in the very last of its cells.

The trick to really killing your battery is straining your system prior to hibernation. By running programs and processes that take a great deal of battery power, you're more likely to reach even deeper into the depths of your battery's cache before the system shuts down. My preferred method is to crank up the brightness of my display and, using iTunes, play music through my laptop's speakers while running the music visualizer. (On a Mac, you can activate the iTunes visualizer using Command+T.)

Drinkability

So media types are making a big deal about the White House lawn meeting tonight between Obama, recently arrested Harvard prof. Henry Gates, and the Cambrige Cop James Crowley who slapped him with a disorderly conduct charge. It's been dubbed the "beer summit." Lucia Whalen, the woman who called 911, wants an invite. Protesters want the President to drink lemonade instead.

I don't really care about either of those things, what does concern me is the President's choice of brews. Gates will be sipping on a Red Stripe, which is a fine choice. Tasty, light but not too light, an excellent beer to enjoy outside on a summer evening. Crowley prefers Blue Moon, I mean I guess if you like hefeweizen . . . seems a little, I dunno, light (in the loafers) to me, especially for a cop, but whatever. Maybe the lighter the better for Sgt. Crowley. My man Barack is going with . . . wait for it . . . Bud Light. What!? I can forgive him for drinking the stuff at the MLB All-Star Game. He was in St. Louis, and it's a baseball game. But c'mon, this is at his house. This is the beer he keeps in his fridge. Bud Light?

May I suggest PBR as an alternative? You still appeal to Joe Six Pack (so to speak) and you support the largest remaining American-owned brewing company. Plus it doesn't taste like dog breath smells. Am I missing a more obvious choice? What should the President be drinking?

If it were me sitting at a picnic table with the President I think I'd have to represent with a local brew, maybe a Polygamy Porter.

Landscapes, scissors, knives and glue

She was five feet tall or less (no, definitely less) and maybe 100 pounds with a stone in her pocket. Dirty brown hair curls that look like they’re by Jheri, but are too ugly to be anything but real. Clearly middle-aged, but draped in a brightly colored baby blue jumpsuit. Finished off with a thick smear of pale concealer and rouge that would even the most liberal clown chuckle, and then blush.

And somehow I recognized her. But it was at least a few hours before I remembered that she was my sixth grade teacher.

Even five years ago, I couldn't imagine forgetting people. My memory hadn't yet begun to... exclude, and I could still seemingly remember everything: Names. Dates. Video game codes. Physics formulas. Lines from books or movies. When to wear socks and when to not wear socks.

Unfortunately, I'm losing that talent. I forget names, but mostly faces. I'm sure it's because I'm a grown up and I'm meeting more people and have more going on in my life than ever before. Or that's a lie, and I've never been good with faces. (Either way, though, I could at least remember stories or details I'd learned about the persons.)

What makes it shocking is that I really, really didn't like my sixth grade teacher. She was mean and made that entire school year unpleasant. She was the type of teacher that you wonder how they could ever have gone into teaching since they clearly have a serious disdain for people in general, and children in particular.

Yet, I didn’t recognize her. Didn’t recognize the woman responsible for the first times I stressed myself out enough to have a sick stomach. Didn’t recognize the first person who I ever had to deal with who does that passive-aggressive thing where they ask you a leading question in a way that implies guilt, even if you didn’t do anything.

Of course, thinking about it, maybe forgetting details isn’t so bad. I had also forgotten a lot of these stories. Sort of.

The Six (Mostly Gaming) Podcasts You Should Be Listening To

Mobcast. (bitmob.com) Kind of in the “iffy” category right now, bitmob has pedigree, a slightly different format and a lot of potential. Five video game people, five topics and about an hour of chat. Sometimes it’s a little dry, and they still haven’t quite figured out the best way to mic the room so that you can clearly hear everyone (plus there’s a lot of cross chat). It also usually features Robert Ashley, but there’s more about him later.

If you like the Mobcast. Try pretty much any other video game podcast on this list.

KEXP Song of the Day. (kexp.org) Free music isn’t always worth the download, and it seems like everyone and their dog has a “Song of the Day” feature. The difference is that KEXP actually has good music. Usually, before it’s big. Since I found out about it about a month ago, I’ve been checking the feed history whenever I hear about some hot, new band. Without exception, the band has always been featured as a song of the day. Usually a year or more before I’ve heard of them. (Yeah, I’m a little behind with music.)

If you like this podcast, try KEXP Live Performances.

Out of the Game. (mexicutedbyhepitacos.libsyn.com) Not, technically, a video game podcast, OotG is made up entirely of former video game press, who now work directly in the video game industry for well-respected companies. (Except Robert Ashley who is freelance games press.) Jeff Green works for the Sims Group at EA. Sean Elliott works for Take-Two, specially for Ken Levine’s (of Bioshock and System Shock fame) group. Luke Smith works for Bungie (the Halo/ Marathon company) and also hosts the Bungie podcast. N’gai Croal, formerly of Newsweek, is now a top consultant for games companies. And Robert Ashley, well, I’ll talk about him more below.

This podcast is decidedly higher and lower than most of the others. The cast and the lack of an official sponsor make it so that they can talk about anything. From stupid Internet memes to the part of the brain that controls decision making.

If you like OotG, you would absolutely like “The Brodeo,” the CGW/GFW podcast. Available on a torrent near you and featuring three members of the OotG crew.

A Life Well Wasted. (alifewellwasted.com) Clearly inspired by This American Life, but aimed directly at gamers. The podcast isn’t actually about the games, but about the culture that surrounds them. Whether it’s about collectors or the death of print media, it’s always interesting. And it’s clearly a labor of love for Robert Ashley (another veteran of the CGW/GFW). I just wish it were updated a little more often. (Although he clearly puts an instance amount of time and care into every episode.)

Ashley also just released an album under the band name I Come to Shanghai. Buy it, and he may have time to produce ALWW more often. (It’s also has some pretty good and/or interesting music.)

If you like ALWW, you will also like This American Life.

The Geekbox. (www.geekbox.net) It’s about a little bit of everything: Games, movies, books, comic books, TV, etc. A little bit of everything nerdy, I should say. But what makes it great is the fact that these are and aren’t you’re average geeks. Sure, it’s recorded in a comic book store and talks about all that nerdy stuff. The cast is what separates it. These just come across as being real.” There is also a ton of interesting, and insightful Lost talk (during the season). It also features another CGW/GFW alum: Ryan Scott.

If you like the Geekbox, you may also like something else like it. Although I’ve yet to find another “geek”-cast where the cast isn’t irritating, self-righteous or pretentious.

This American Life. (thislife.org) This is the gimme. Nearly always at the top of the iTunes Podcast rankings, TAL is easily the best, most interesting, most challenging and most compelling podcast you can listen to. Probably, you already listen to it. If not, there is something wrong with you.

If you like TAL, you may also like the Moth podcast. It’s shorter-format oral storytelling that is frequently sourced on TAL.

The race card

I went to my favorite Vietnamese restaurant for lunch today. They always have a muted TV showing CNN without closed captions, and the coverage this afternoon largely surrounded the Obama/Gates situation. I happened to be watching when a dialog box popped up on the screen with the following prompt soliciting comments from viewers:

Is race an issue in America?

Aside from being one of the more ridiculous questions I'd ever seen posed with what I can only assume was a straight face, it made me wonder whether there are respectable people in this country who would actually say No. I mean, am I crazy to think that race is obviously a huge issue in this country? Could social psychologists all be wrong? Could the whole Reverend Wright situation have been caused by, like, a simple misunderstanding? Could Michelle Obama's thesis have been written so long ago that her daughters won't experience any of the same things she did? Could Don Imus be a good guy? Did we all totally have the wrong idea about that NY Post cartoon?

My next stop after lunch was Supercuts. I was second in line to a ridiculously adorable black toddler whose apparently adopted mother was white. When I added my name to the list of people waiting for a haircut, I noticed that the woman had written "African American" in the "Requested Stylist" field. My only guess is that the little boy was more comfortable around strangers who looked like him? Who knows.

What I do know is that when the boy started freaking out about being put in the chair and screamed NOOOOOOOOOOOO when the incredibly patient African American stylist approached him with scissors, his mother snatched him up, put him on her lap, told the stylist to continue, and everything was fine. Clearly this was a child in the presence of his adoring mother, and she had the situation totally under control. As the haircut proceeded, the mom and barber chatted and laughed while the tentative little boy sat calmly on his mother's lap. The whole scene was completely adorable.

People kind of gawked. Among them was a super elderly white woman sporting an oxygen tank and curlers who was wearing the expression of someone in Normandy on D-Day.

I don't really have any conclusions to draw from this weird sequence of events, but I did leave the barbershop thinking about one thing in particular: When that little boy gets older and starts asking his mother about why she looks different than he does, and as he begins to become aware of the bizarre cultural differences in the nexus between black and white Americans, the fact that we will have had a black president may well change the way he grows up perceiving the world. It's going to be a long time coming, but perhaps it's possible that one day race won't be an issue in America.

A Ute in Portland. . .

Despite himself Kevin Pritchard has achieved, in my opinion the best possible outcome for his team this offseason. Andre Miller is exactly what Portland needed. Not Hedo Turkoglu, not Paul Millsap, not even Kirk Hinrich. This is the perfect fit. Signing Miller will have a huge effect on the team. Think the Chauncey Billups addition in Denver.

The real question is, why wasn't Miller priority number 1? Any answers Blazer fans?

P.D.A.

Curious if you locals could give us some eye-witness accounts or on-the-ground reports of the latest attempt by the Mormon Church to completely decimate the tatters of its public reputation. The imbroglio looks to intertwine two particularly vexing issues for the Church: the 2003 public easement of Main St. and its financial support of Prop 8. Bravo!

I particularly admire the oblivious conviction with which the Church has defended its actions, claiming that the two men had been "engaged in passionate kissing, groping, profane and lewd language, and had obviously been using alcohol." Profane and lewd language. Heaven forbid! And the alcohol is a clear sign that the two were a bunch of no good degenerates.

Although my favorite quotes from scanning local papers comes from the The Salt Lake Tribune, reporting on the second week of protests:

Police arrived after reports of two slight altercations between protesters and counter-protesters, including a roll-by kiss given to one female counter-protester by a man on in-line skates who sped north across the plaza grounds too fast to be apprehended.

A few thoughts on gaming.

1) Rock Band: Harmonix has shifted the burden of developing new musical content to the labels themselves. Pardon me -- "empowered." It is a savvy move. Let the labels and artists save themselves. Truly a win/win for everybody (except Sony and Nintendo, they will have to wait 30 days after the debut of each song -- I guess Microsoft is going to try buying its way to the top) if the quality is consistent and the content is expanded. I am sure labels could easily outsource the work to fans who would just be happy to have the content available [The Rapture -- pick me!!].

2) 1 vs. 100: A logical, if not altogether obvious, move for online console gaming. It's easy to pick up, fun to play, and there are even prizes involved. Microsoft wins because it draws in a huge captive audience for in-game advertising. All they need is to incentivize the crowd in some better manner. It is hard not to get discouraged when you instantly answer every question but still lose to a 1000 other people who are an impossible split-second ahead of you every time. Regardless, promote whoever made this idea happen.

3) Dragon Quest IX: Sounds like a letdown. Sounds like Final Fantasy XII.

4) I believe Mark promised that he was going to clue me in on some sweet videogame related podcasts. I know he is unpacking and all, but he needs to get his priorities straight. Just like the Portland Trailblazers.

Like a splinter in your mind.

I sliced my fingernail in half on an apple peeler while trying to unjam a stuck kitchen drawer.

It didn't hurt. Just incredibly uncomfortable. Like nails on a chalkboard.

And even though the slash is only a sliver in width you would be amazed at how everything gets caught in it. It is like I have velcro wrapped around my finger.

I probably think about my fingernails once a month.

Now it is all I can think about.

A red letter day.

The Orange Box
Until this year I had never played Half-Life. It is kind of embarrassing to admit. I guess the equivalent would be saying that I had never seen The Godfather or listened to Revolver.

I am not quite sure how it happened. 1998 was the peak of my desktop gaming. I wasted my time with weaker efforts built around the Quake engine - like Quake - and played practically every Sierra Entertainment game released during this timeframe. Yet for some mysterious reason, Half-Life never popped up on my radar.

To atone for my wasted youth, I impulsively bought the complete Half-Life set off Steam before launching into The Orange Box.

While Half-Life certainly feels 11 years old, it is easy to see why it was heralded as a giant leap forward in the first person shooter genre. Unlike the typical FPS of the era which forced you through a gauntlet of non-sensical and non-linear levels, Half-Life is holistically designed: levels flow naturally together and items are placed organically in their environment according to internal logic of the game. Even the quarreling enemy forces suggest a world larger than the scope of the game itself.

Surprisingly, the most dated and distracting element of Half-Life is not the graphics, but the physics -- principally, a lack of friction. In old-school first person shooters, you tend to glide over objects like a massless apparition, which wouldn't be a problem if Half-Life didn't rely so heavily on platform jumping. Playing through the game a decade late gave me a whole new appreciation for the attention designers now pay to physicality.

Would I recommend Half-Life to a contemporary gamer? Not unless he was looking for a history lesson. Unfortunately, first person shooters aren't exactly vintage wine: they age poorly.

Half-Life 2, in contrast, could be released today and still be considered one of the greatest games of its generation. Despite being imitated by practically every subsequent FPS, Half-Life 2 did it five years earlier and, more importantly, better.

At its core, Half-Life 2 is a fairly basic FPS. Beyond the Source physics engine and attending Gravity Gun, which you can see echoes of in the now seemingly mandatory telekinesis feature in just about every game, Half-Life 2 does not fundamentally challenge the boundaries of the genre, so much as perfect and refine them.

Anybody who has played Portal, knows that Valve makes economical and exceptionally smart choices. The first thirty minutes of Half-Life 2 are a master-class is establishing mood. I hate to reach for cinematic analogies, but as I was herded through the security checkpoints of the post-apocalyptical City 17 while a Big Brother-eqsque demagogue spouted doublespeak, I couldn't help but be reminded of Children of Men. And the analogy doesn't stop at visual or tonal similarities: both employ the in medias res narrative strategy of forgoing clunky exposition and leaving you to piece everything together.

And even if Valve doesn't subvert the mechanical trappings of the genre, it certainly has fun deconstructing the narrative consequences of them. Throughout the game there is a wry self-deprecating humor over the disconnect between narrative content and game mechanic (ie. Gordan Freeman using his PhD in theoretical physics to turn switches). But more intriguing is a playful innuendo with the messianic subtext that has accompanied every FPS since Blazkowicz embarked on his suicide mission against Hitler, or more explicitly, the unknown soldier and his kamikaze path through the legions of hell.

Only four minor nuisances mar what is otherwise a flawless game:

1) Load times. More frequent and lengthier than they should be.

2) The vehicle controls are comically bad. Like how did this possibly make it out of beta bad.

3) Heat-seeking Rocket Launchers. Maybe there is some secret here that I just don't get, but I never quite got the hang of the rocket launchers. Which is a shame because all of the most difficult battles require them. A curious problem given how well the game orients you on every other facet of the control set-up.

4) The ending. A terribly unsatisfying attempt at recapturing the calculated cynicism that ended the first Half-Life. Luckily, in the context of the The Orange Box, it doesn't really matter: you can, and probably will, move immediately on to the next episode.

Well, maybe. You could easily skip Episode 1 without missing a beat. Although it is hard to complain about more Half-Life 2, just about everything in Episode 1 feels redundant. You go to the Citadel, again. You battle striders, again. All in all, everything is wrapped up in under three hours and not much is resolved.

Episode 2, in contrast, does what all of the best sequels accomplish: dramatically increasing the stakes. The set-pieces are exhilarating hair-benders with Valve ratcheting up the pressure incrementally past your breaking point. The climactic battle at White Forest needs to be played: it is quite possibly the best recreation of the Battle of Hoth in or outside of the Star Wars gaming universe.

When all is said and done, however, I do have to question Valve's decision to release the continuing story of the Half-Life franchise in an episodic format. Episode 3 is not expected to come out for another year, and even that release date is tentative. 2010 will mirror the approximate distance in time between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, and I can't imagine the three episodes collectively are going to be as satisfying as if Valve had just held off for a more traditional sequel.

Regardless of these minor qualms, at $20 The Orange Box is easily the best console gaming value on the market. Portal alone is worth the price of admission. My only recommendation might be to wait until Episode 3 has a firm release date so you are not stranded in narrative limbo like the rest of us.

And remember: the cake is a lie.

Grade: A+
Half-Life 2: A
Half-Life 2 - Episode 1: B-
Half-Life 2 - Episode 2: A-
Portal: A
Team Fortress 2: INC [I'm not playing with tweens on XBOX Live]

Who's bad? Not Jerry West

This is actually real.

Not Just for Movies with that Guy from Scrubs Anymore

Mos Def

The Ecstatic

If you are a hip-hop fan I think you kind of have to be a Mos Def fan, I mean at least a Black Star (his 1998 collaboration with Talib Kweli - new album next year!?) and Black on Both Sides (Def's 1999 LP) fan.

But Mos' latest releases haven't been quite as good, The New Danger had a couple good tracks, and True Magic was, let's be honest, anything but. Still, when I heard Mos Def was releasing a new album I had to get it. I owed it to him to give it a listen. I am glad I did. The Ecstatic is at times as energetic as Black on Both Sides but it's a more refined, adult effort than the debut. Get it.

Standout tracks: "Auditorium" feat. Slick Rick. Yes, Slick Rick. Just click on it. "Quiet Dog Bite Hard." "History" feat. Talib Kweli, and produced by J-Dilla (R.I.P.).