Disarmingly pretty, face melting tone.
580782
I love this particular Jackson model.  It has a gorgeous finish and really doesn't look like most Jacksons...you generally see black or white bodies and they look like metal guitars.  This soloist has an unassuming look to it and I get tons of compliments on it when I play it live.  My guitar rack always has my 25th anniversary PRS 513 in trans blue, a Gibson Les Paul custom in tobacco burst finish, an Ibanez JS1300 Joe Satriani signature edition and either this Jackson or my blue burst DK2 Dinky.  Make no mistake, this guitar is super well suited to playing metal.  The neck is amazingly quick, on par with the $5500 PRS,  and it's tone is so ungodly that I don't engage my distortion pedal a lot of the time, it just screams.  I play through a Mesa 100w head and 4x12 cab and I really prefer guitars with real character to their tone.  With the blade switch on this guy, you can get lead tone with no trouble and get a Bullet-ish sound without any effects engaged, all for under a grand.  I like this one almost as much as my Dinky, which cost four times as much and has an identical neck...these guitars are designed so well that they almost play themselves.

I'd highly recommend this model to novices who want an instrument they can be proud of and not constantly wish to upgrade to something better.  I'm a very experienced player and still play this guitar very frequently, so it's definitely worth owning for years.
3173406
Captures you like a tidal wave of sound. It rolls you into a trance like no other.
Gorgeous stuff!
543943
It is lovely. I wisk I could show a pciture, but...too hot for this
3680980
if spending an entire afternoon watching snails race across the surface of a relatively small lily pad feels like a heart-throbbing endeavor to you, you'll be pleased to find that this viewsonic display operates at the blinding speed of a PSP game loading screen that will be sure to titillate your every haphazard fancy.

this thing is simply amazing. i mean, when i feel like doing something extremely boring, like listening to my music collection on google music or the stock music player as i paint on my computer, it decides to challenge my tedious routine by giving me various graphical or playback glitches, or subtly make alternate recommendations to break my routine by launching a completely different application at random. it sometimes would outright refuse to respond to my touch! i then need to spend a good 20 minutes wooing it back into letting me live my boring life the way i want. this would sometimes work, and it would listen, and my music would play. but most of the time, our romantic dissonance quickly escalates into a rather violent affair with plenty of door-shutting and desk-pounding...needless to say, i pushed its buttons so hard that it would hard-reset and spring awake anew at the speed that an overfilled balloon naturally deflates. it would then quaintly agree with me, if only for a little while.

oh, what was that? no, don't twitch my playlist at me, i know you're angry because i touched you 10 minutes ago when you refused to load my songs...i know you've been harboring that rage stemming from my seemingly countless stabs at your rigid surface with my near-bloodied fingers.

oh viewsonic smart display, without you my life would be perfect. too perfect...and you're here to remind me that i don't deserve perfection. not yet. thank you, my dear screen, for putting me in my place.
4421377
.  This is a deep heady aural project of the highest grade.

At first the expressions are difficult to grasp and hold onto.  I could not rise above its horizontal resonances. . . .  As I familiarized myself with the tonality I began to appreciate the dimensions it presented.

An expression of subdued organic and somewhat uncomfortable electronic layers. A tonal ladder of serene yet tense combinations.  Both consoling and frightening.  Smooth drones uplifted by course electronica.  These dark melancholic motifs prove to be a peculiar harmony indeed.

Nothing out there really sounds like this. This is a heavy ambient wine.  It cannot be listened to casually. Because at that shallow level of appreciation it shall all go over your head.

The CD case is quite perplexing.  Not some mysterious outer/inner space nebulous computer cloud. Rather an antiquidated memorial wall of photos of male soldiers.
4899250
there is a fine line between twisted post-modern genius and pretentious art-school nonsense.
one look at the song titles on the reverse of this cd would suggest it would fall into the latter. random, semantically redundant collaborations of words and phrases portraying some form of 'abstract-metaphor' that anyone other than the artist just "wouldn't get" prompt images of 'if you need to ask you don't need to know', 'kid A really was radiohead's best album' art punks, with ironic haircuts. the nonsensical cut and paste/my 4 year old cousin could do a better pen and ink drawing than that cover art does little to dispell this image.

how disarming then to nonchalantly place the cd in my stereo and have my philistine ears blasted by the most discordant yet intrinsically beautiful cacaphony since converge's 'petitioning the empty sky'.
at first this album lives up to all the conceited expectations. kicking things off with a 40 second blast of post-at the drive-in art-noise, all jittery guitars and fingernails-on-a-blackboard vocals, leaves me wondering whether my hyphen key will make it to the end of the review. but unlike fellow peddlers of high-brow spazzcore the locust, blood brothers sound far too ridiculous to be massaging their own egos with their unique self-indulgent brand of punk. they seem to be having too much fun. this is not, however, ridiculous in a bad way just in the sense that you will never have heard anything like this before.

dual vocalists jordan and johnny reject traditional call and response structures coming across as a pair of restless children squabling for the limelight in a sequence of screeching tantrums. anywhere else it would be aural torture but within the confines of their own warped world, perversely, it sounds the most logical medium to vent their musical frustrations. throughout the album guitars switch between jangling rhythms and serrated, spiteful blasts of bittersweet noise and drums fidget and twitch like a nervous cat.

yet despite its distracted exterior it is an album which conceals something far more beautiful. amid the off kilter percussion and insane-asylum vocals lay sublimely delicate melodies. the glockenspiel in 'ambulance vs ambulance' or the piano led outro of 'every breath is a bomb' show that beneath the layers of spiky riffs beats a heart of opulent melody.
and it is the ability to allow these melodies, no matter how understated, to define and make sense of the confusion of noise that is the blood brothers' true artistic genius.
4020508
Gorgeous, devastating, and, finally, haunting.
4836391
From the "In the event of a water landing, it also functions as a floatation device" glitzy glutes of yore (you'd expect a small planet there the way people talk about it) to the desperate clutches-at-straws in attempts to prove she's untouched by her fame (then stop trying to convince us) to the cover of this very album (umm, photographer - she has a face), Jennifer Lopez is someone who's adored by many, and apparently hated by a lot more.
I guess I'd fall in-between - I don't really either love or hate her. She's not a powerhouse vocalist, but I find her pleasant enough. She's a helluva dancer when she wants to be (one of those diva things, I suppose) And, it seems, now she's learned how to tackl the more mellow stuff (finally) - mellow stuff I loathed at first... but I've since warmed up to it.
Granted, most of this album's midtempo and relaxing (and romantic, even), but don't let that put you off (unless your tastes don't run in that direction) - The Mighty Lopez Thing's settled in comfortably among lush, slightly-retro arrangements and... well, a whole lotta lovin'. (Maybe she should just stop making songs dedicated to The Boyfriend Of The Moment - lord knows she has trouble keeping one)
You have the requisite stinkers, of course - the sunny, casually-upbeat Jenny From The Block is hideous, annoying (for god's sake, Jennifer just leave the guest rappers off - Ja Rule was bad enough), and overall pitiful as Jennifer tries to remind us (once again) that she's still down-to-earth, the average girl you knew from the block (never mind growing up in the suburbs, attending a private school, and currently flashing all the jewelry she owns like each piece is the last on Earth). And All I Have is equally insipid, bogged down by a treated, high-pitched voice in the background and LL Cool J mumbling through his verses.
And Dear Ben bores the living hell out of me. But on to the good stuff.
Opener Still is probably the best thing you could ever hope for TO open this album - it sets up the retro feel with a classy blast, backed by some awesome strings and a beat that'll course through your veins for hours to come. The One (reworked, for some reason, at the end of the album) glides along calmly on a mandolin line mixed with a soothing R&B beat for a pretty delicious offering (and a breakdown that I'm in love with), while Again dirfts into ballad territory with a beautiful piano opening and some warbling keyboard.
Baby I Love U! probably marks one of my favorites on here, though (along with Still and Again) with its 60-ish, pseudo-Supremes lounge feel and an uplifting chorus. (Gotta love the bass line, too) It's just... well, reeeeeally pretty. Let's leave it at that.
This isn't something that everyone'll like right-off (or at all) , especially given Jennifer's drift into more calming waters - but, given a chance or few, it may just grow on you yet. So if you wanna hear Jennifer-gone-retro (sorta) and can deal with her singing her love for Ben Affleck through 12 songs, then this is for you.
2025558
Very well-focalized, and an evenly produced sound (granted, there is no special color, nor low register) --- but the problem is the anonymous quality of the interpretations.  If you want to truly understand Iphigenie's predicament in her aria 'O malheureuse Iphigenie', seek Janet Baker.  Not a generalized torment beautifully sounded -- but a moment of tormented grandeur.
4244441
Some people might think of this band as being "irritating", but it is part of their art. Listening to this album is like watching an improvised theatre performance.
The sound of this band is both 'crazy',  and 'uplifting'. It is almost impossible to put these two words together to  describe something, yet it is!
The album starts very low, forcing you to  pump up the volume (to hear whats going on). All of a sudden,  "BOOM" the drums enter! This effect might give someone a heart  attack!
Other things that might kill you are Einar's howls and Bjork's  "Cut-throat" voice. Her voice is very untamed, unlike that in her  solo work these days. It goes everywhere and morphs a lot. She might be a  little innocent girl one second, then the next a fierce monster that wants  to eat you alive! Another thing about Bjork in this band, is that she seems  to be having a lot more fun than in her new stuff.
This album is not only  for Bjork fans (in fact, some people prefer this to her solo stuff), but  for music enthusiasts. It is a revolution in Pop music. A cult classic!
1073335
On the cover we have the lovely Ann Coulter.  Her pose is incredible. But what really sets it on fire is her dress. The blue with white trim is genius. So freakin hot.
1871964
Gorgeous and unforgiving, better be in great shape.
2619784
I'm very satisfied with the looks of this watch! It has a beatiful rose gold face outline and the grey is the perfect complimentary shade. The only thing I cannot stand is the fact that I can literally hear my life ticking away. Every time the second hand ticks, you can hear it. I often times take it off because it bothers me so much. I want to buy more watches from wristology but the noisy-ness of this watch steers me away.
3873307
Lady Gaga is a product of delicious, kitschy, wretched excess. She wallows in it like a bubble bath. She throws it into the air like so many bags of glitter and confetti. If there's something flashy, she lunges it for it before anyone else even sees a flicker. And more to the point, she makes absolutely no apologies for madly, passionately being in love with what she's creating and the ingredients she is building her home for Little Monsters from. This is what make Lady Gaga and her "Born This Way" so lovable.

Like Madonna, Elton John or even David Bowie before her, Gaga spares no excess when it comes to her music. Does she want to emulate Springsteen? Then not only will there be a sax solo, Clarence Clemmons himself is going to play it ("Hair," "Edge Of Glory"). Does she think Madonna's expression of Catholic guilt on "Like a Prayer" was a high point of 80's dance music? Then "Judas" and "Black Jesus" are where it's really at for the 2010's. That cover image of Gaga as a human motorcycle is no accident, either. To meet that expectation, she gives herself up to her "Heavy Metal Lover" and then mashes cute girly kitsch with a road-warrior meme on "Highway Unicorn." There's nothing Gaga won't try, nor any room for subtleties.

The bonus disc proves this point even more by including the "country road" version of the title track. (The other tracks are useless remixes). Gaga is as calculating and cunning as she is creative and wild. The song "Born This Way" references Madonna's "Express Yourself," "The Queen" (one of the deluxe edition's extra tracks) references Queen's "Killer Queen" and "The Edge Of Glory" -  along with the title song, my favorite on the album - takes its cues from all those 80's Bon Jovi and Springsteen anthems. The Mother Monster knows that this is her moment and she's using it to both pay tribute to all the influences that came before her as well as establish that she is every bit their creative equal. That's what makes "Born This Way" a terrific pop album and Lady Gaga herself such a fascinating artist.
1665030
Whether you like them or not, you've got to at least give Emerson Lake & Palmer credit for having the balls to pull off something like PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION. The original "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky is one of music's most highly-regarded piano showpieces; likewise, the arrangement by Maurice Ravel is hailed as one of the premier orchestral works of all time. And ELP, a band both renowned and reviled for their savagely bombastic jazz-inflected improvisations and self-conscious pomposity, decided to give it a whirl. You can almost hear the critics screaming. But I've learned to tune out the screaming and just listen to the music - when you're a Paul McCartney fan, as I am, that's par for the course. And also par for the course is finding that, while sometimes the critics have a point, more often than not they have no clue what they're talking about.

Strangely enough, I'd say in this case the critics got more right than they usually do in such situations. They called ELP's adaptation loud, noisy, pompous, pretentious, self-important, self-indulgent, and sacrilegious. And it's all of those things, with a heaping helping of grandiloquence on the side and silliness to taste. But that's precisely the point. Moments such as Keith Emerson's Hammond playing Mussorgsky's instantly recognizable "Promenade" backed by Carl Palmer's doomsday drumming; diverging from "The Old Castle" into some angular "Blues Variations"; and Greg Lake shouting lines like "There's no ending to my life/No beginning to my death/Death is life!" over "The Great Gates of Kiev", exist pretty much just for the sake of hearing something so absurd. And yet somehow ELP make their twisted rearrangements work as ELP and not just ELP playing Mussorgsky, sounding very much like themselves while still allowing you to hear the originals underneath. The playing is stellar throughout, of course, though as usual Emerson steals the show with his mind-bending keyboard soloing.

And just to make sure we realize that they realize how ridiculous this all is, PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION concludes with the awfully-titled "Nutrocker", a supremely silly cover of a supremely silly arrangement of the "March" from Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker". Now there's an example of the prog spirit if I ever heard one.
4427330
This marvelous performance of Haydn's 'The Seasons,' conducted by Helmut Rilling and his longtime musical partners, the Gchinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, with soloists Annegeer Stumphius (soprano: Hanne), Alexander Stevenson (tenor: Lukas), and Wolfgang Schne (basso: Simon) is marred by the overactive imagination of whoever was in charge of the visual aspects of the production.
One understands the temptation to illustrate 'the seasons' but the visuals frequently cut away from the musicians to show gauzy, romanticized nature pictures that, while often [too] lovely, become cloying after only a few minutes. The performers are side-lit by different colors for each of the seasons (a sickly green for Spring, yellow for Summer, orange for Autumn, and greyish-silver for Winter); how original! Actually, it's  distracting and at times simply ugly (as when the soprano's green-hued hair makes her look like a witch).
Further, for us non-German speakers there are no English subtitles for the German text and no libretto supplied in the otherwise glossy program booklet. What a shame. Perhaps they didn't want us to know that Baron von Swieten's text for 'Die Jahreszeiten' is rather clumsy and they thought we'd be better off looking at pretty pictures and writing our own mental libretto.
This is a shame because, as I indicated, the performance itself is terrific. The soprano has a lovely silvery tone and she portrays the maiden, Hanne, with suitable innocence. Her stalwart  peasant suitor, Lukas, is portrayed with an attractive bronzy tenor and Hanne's papa, Simon, is the well-loved rich-voiced basso, Wolfgang Schne. Helmut Rilling, whose recording of all of the Bach cantatas with this orchestra and chorus are among my own favorite CDs, conducts a suitably alert and subtle 'Seasons.'
Scott Morrison
3430584
If you've ever hated someone's face, you might enjoy singing along with this catchy song while you work through your anger. I know I do! It's loud, rocking and fun -- just what you will come to expect from this feisty LA punk group.