Sunny Morning @ Tenny Park

I jumped back into the subscription music game, this time with Rhapsody, which is compatible with my cheap-o player. I preferred Yahoo! Music Unlimited To Go's pricing and discovery features, but, well, it doesn't exist anymore. It's still a bargain to have access to 4 million songs for the cost of a CD per month. I stumbled onto this post that explains the allure of subscription music better than I could: DRM and iTunes and Rhapsody Music.

With my newly aquired musical freedom, I grabbed Portishead's new album, Third... their first release in 11 years. Portishead is synonymous with Trip Hop, probably my favorite genre. Well, they are Trip Hop no more. My first reaction was, "They should have stopped at two." A second listen to the more industrial sound they've crafted went over better. I don't favor the direction they've taken, but it's starting to catch on. Leading the way to acceptance is "Machine Gun", which unsurprisingly turned out to be the first single.

Laughing in the face of my new subscription service, Nine Inch Nails released their latest album, The Slip, free of DRM, free of charge and largely free of restrictions. Only part way through my first listen, I'm loving the distorted guitar tones, but so far it doesn't carry the catchiness of my favorite NIN effort, Broken. As Portishead ushered in the age of Trip Hop for me, NIN's Broken and Ministry's Psalm 69 defined my taste for industial metal.


Portishead: Machine Gun (2008)


Portishead: Wandering Star (1994)


Nine Inch Nails: 1,000,000 (2008)


Nine Inch Nails: Wish (1992)


Ministry: Jesus Built My Hot Rod (1991)