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archived music reviews

Radiohead : Hail to the Theif - Intetersting album, much like all Radiohead CD's. Not a single 'commercial' song on the CD. THese guys are about the music, and it seems their love for electronics is here forever.

Britney Spears : In the Zone - The production on this album is interesting. Her voice still sounds like 'still a girl, not yet a woman". It's one of those CD's where you know the videos have to be Bling Bling in order to warrant repeated listening. Interesting choice of producers.

CHingy : Jackpot - Like a lot of CD's these days, the albums are made after the 2-3 hit singles are produced. THe hits are nice (right thurr), the rest is just thurr.

Ludicris : CHicken and Beer - THe title doesn't do much for the civil rights struggle & stereotypes, but the CD has 3 bangers on it. Again it seems like the real effort goes into 3 songs, while the rest just kind of 'get made'.

Yeah YEah Yeah's :Fever To Tell - 'Map's' is the song that drew me into these guys. DOn't you hate it when the name of the song has NOTHING to do with the content. Still this is one of the best CD's I've hear so far in 2004. Simple alternative rock, not over produced like most music today, and female vocals full of aingst always get me! CHeck it out. These guys have a bass player :-)

Bic RUnga : Beautiful collision - Light n breezy is the best way to describe this one. ITs all over the map as far as style. Nice productions and a really seet voice. I love the female vocalists!

Joss STone - NIce voice. THis is almost like listening to a demo really. THing I like about her is that she lets the song come to her. I get so tired of the 'chruch nonsense' you hear in every song now. Vocal tricks, octave shifts. All not needed. Just sing the song with some conviction. As far as the sound of the album I really don't like it. I prefer studio sounding records than live band one's, but depsite that this is a nice set to listen to. Her remake of the WHite Stripes "Fell in Love with a girl" really is a testament to how good a writers they are. She sings the song with feeling, you can understand every word (now lol!), and leaves the vocal theatrics to American Idol contestants. Recommended.

Twista : Kamikazee - Nice variety of beats on this cd. Not exactly the kind of cd you want to listen too if you love your mom and repsect owmen, but Twista has a style that is unique to his own. If you can handle it for a whole cd than I recommened scooping this one up. Overnight Celebrity is a classic already, and the video also features extra cute & tanlented violinist Miri Ben-Ari.

Timbaland & Magoo : Under Construction 2 - I have high regards for Timbaland as a producer, he has (and continues) to make some pretty inovative singles. Full Albums aren't really his stronghold, but that's not really his (and other producers) fault. WHen your hot people will take ANYTHING you make, so it's easy to spread yourself to thin. He seems bitter about not recieving due credit and constantly makes reference to his 'beats' being stolen the day they come out. I hope he forgets about all that nonsense and just continues to make hot ass singles. I still remember the first time I heard "One in a Million" by Alliyah (the single) and was truly amazed at the effort put into it. OVerall and average CD.

Miquel Migs : Nude Tempo dj mix - 2 words. Smooth shit!

Sarah McLachlan : afterglow - Nice breezy CD. Made me want to moisturize my face or something. She's a class act and her cd's always have that calm cool feel to it. CHeck it out.

Jay-Z : Black album - TO me all of JAy-Z's cd;s sound the same. It's not a bad thing of course, but you know what your going to get (unlike outkast or someone like that). The retirement talk is ridiculous, there's no reason why he shoudln't be dropping cd's 1 or 2 times a year. Overall a good album. Hope he get's with some different producers next time round.

alicia keys - dairy of A Keys - I liked this one 300 times more than her first record. Best way to describe it is some nice smooth as shit. It gets off to a ruff start but after "you don't know my name" it's really nice listening. Past n present mixed together

Seal 4 - As usual Seal drops a quality CD. I know his overcompressed sound can be hard to take in large quantities, but his voice is always front and center. Inspirational and highly listenable is the way I'd describe it. Each record gets better and better.

Kanye West : College dropout - exceptional CD. With so much junk rap out now it's refreshing to hear a cd minus the 1,232,323 "I sell drugs, I got ho's, my rims are bigger' releases out there. Nice listening, nice beats.

Usher : Confessions - No different than any of his other CD's. Quality work, and enough music producers & engineers to keep you reading the credits for a good hour lol.

Kodak CX7330: Overall a good entry level camera. Takes great color photo's and with a 512MB sd card you get 500 pictures of max quality. It's extremely easy to use (I brought my mother one and she has no problem suing it) and with XP you do not have to install their software to get your photo's and movies of the camera. Battery life is average depending on how much flash you use and how often you use the lcd screen. If you want the battery to last long on any digital camera get used to shooting thru the viewer just like you did for your film camera. Those LCD's take a lot of jiuce.

The setbacks to this camera is that you cannot change any of the settings that will allow you to fine tune your pictures or improve the quality of the pictures on it's best settings. Kodak desgined this camera thinking you don't want to think about what they thought of to make a digital camera.....in other words it's digital photography for dummies. For casual picture taking this is not a issue at all. SInce most people make their picture veiwing programs fit the entire image on the monitor, you will have crisp and clean photos (as you will see below). WHen viewed this way they look very clear, very detailed, and very colorful. It takes stunning outdoor pictures, and the the prints it makes are very nice.

It's when you start to move up on the detail tree you will start to notice problems. WHen you view the pictures actual size you can see where kodak went nuts with the jpeg compression. THis will reflect in prints you want to print out. There is noticable jpeg compression noise on the pictures when you veiw them actual size when taken on the max setting 2032 x 1524. Kodak set the compression ratio to high. Branches on trees or blades of grass will be a blur, and indoor photo's without sunlight start to suck. Shame they didn't include a firmware option to change the compression ratios. Also you better snap at least 2 takes of those phot's you know you want to come out nice because a lot of the pics will come out blurry, and I hold the camera as still as possible a couple second after I press the shutter button.

So if your looking for good detail in your pictures you might want to up the $$ and get a model with more mojo and MP (a next level Kodak, Canon, Nikon, Minolta, ect). The color on this camera is really great, it takes nice daylight photos. It has a very strong flash, but that doesn't help when you lose detail due to poor focusing and over jpeg compression. THe movie mode is nice, writes quicktime movies with sound, as big as you memory card will allow.