pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/rhythm/" rel="tag"Rhythm/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://www.gamespot.com/news/6201536.html"img hspace="0" border="1" vspace="4" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/11/gam_brokenpedal_490.jpg" //abr //div Some of Joystiq's heavier-footed staffers have experienced the heartbreak that comes from snapping the original ema href="http://www.joystiq.com/search/?q=Rock%20Band"Rock Band/a/em kick pedal in the midst of a feverish playthough of strikeParamore's "That's What You Get"/strike er, Judas Priest's "Painkiller". However, we never thought to take the bold course of action currently being followed by one Monte Morgan, who recently a href="http://www.gamespot.com/news/6201536.html"filed a class-action suit/a against Harmonix, MTV Networks (as well as parent company Viacom), and Electronic Arts for producing and distributing such an easily busted bass drum beater.br /br /Morgan claims that the pedal "fractures under ordinary and expected usage," keeping potential faux-drummers from playing emRock Band/em "in the manner marketed and advertised." He also cites Harmonix and MTV Games for selling the original kit with knowledge of the pedal's fragility -- evidenced, he claims, by the a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/26/fix-or-prevent-a-broken-rock-band-drum-pedal/"metal-reinforced pedal/a included in emRock Band 2/em. His case calls for reimbursement of the purchase price of the emRock Band/em drum kit, and for the title's publishers to stop selling the brittle peripheral. We suggest another settlement -- just include a a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BctbNXEexcE"free dab of Rock Jam/a in every bundle. Everybody wins!p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/22/harmonix-ea-sued-for-flimsy-rock-band-kick-pedal/"Harmonix, EA sued for flimsy Rock Band kick pedal/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href=http://www.gamespot.com/news/6201536.htmlRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/22/harmonix-ea-sued-for-flimsy-rock-band-kick-pedal/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1380321/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/22/harmonix-ea-sued-for-flimsy-rock-band-kick-pedal/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Jg25shEeNw8V0rUOW9u4fZmAs5I/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Jg25shEeNw8V0rUOW9u4fZmAs5I/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=meUOCf8H"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=meUOCf8H" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=iJ2psYXm"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=iJ2psYXm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/bdxKEE_QX3U" height="1" width="1"/

808s and Heartbreak, le tout nouvel album de Kanye West est disponible en avant-première sur MySpace Music avant d’être officiellement lancé lundi, le 24 novembre. Voici, en vidéo, un aperçu de ce CD.

Click here to stream KanYe's entire new album, 808s and Heartbreak in advance of its Monday release!

To put Chinese Democracy in some perspective: it arrives 17 years after the twin Use Your Illusions, the last set of original music by Guns N’ Roses. Seventeen years prior to the Illusions, it was 1974, back before the Ramones and Sex Pistols, back before Aerosmith had Rocks and Toys in the Attic, back before Queen had A Night at the Opera — back before almost anything that Axl Rose worships even existed. Generations have passed in these 17 years but not for Axl. He cut himself off from the world following the trouble-ridden Illusion tour, retreating to the Hollywood Hills, swapping every original GNR member in favor for contract players culled from his mid-’90s musical obsessions — Tommy Stinson from the Replacements, Robin Finck from Nine Inch Nails, Buckethead from guitar magazines — as he turned into rock’s Charles Foster Kane, a genius in self-imposed exile spending millions to make his own Xanadu, Chinese Democracy.

Like Xanadu, Chinese Democracy is a monument to man’s might, but where Kane sought to bring the world underneath his roof, Axl labored to create an ideal version of his inner world, working endlessly on a set of songs about his heartbreak, persecution and paranoia, topics well-mined on the Illusions. Using the pompous ten-minute epics “Estranged” and “November Rain” as his foundation, Axl strips away all remnants of the old, snake-dancing GNR, shedding the black humor and blues, replacing any good times with vindictive spleen in the vein of “You Could Be Mine.” All this melodrama and malevolence feels familiar and, surprisingly, so does much of Chinese Democracy, even for those listeners that didn’t hear the portions of the record as leaked demos and live tracks. Despite a few surface flourishes - all the endless, evident hours spent on ProTools, a hip-hop loop here, a Spanish six-string there, absurd elastic guitar effects - this is an album unconcerned with the future of rock & roll. One listen and it’s abundantly clear that Axl spent the decade-plus in the studio refining, not reinventing, obsessing over a handful of tracks, spending an inordinate amount of timing chasing the sound his head - that’s it, no more, no less.

Such maniacal indulgence is ridiculous but strangely understandable: Rose received unlimited time and money to create this album, so why not take full advantage and obsess over every last detail? The odd thing is, he spent all this time and money on an album that is deliberately not a grand masterpiece — a record that pushes limits or digs deep — but merely a set of 14 songs. Compared to the chaotic Use Your Illusions, Chinese Democracy feels strangely modest, but that’s because it’s a single polished album, not a double album so over-stuffed it duplicates songs. Modest is an odd word for an album a decade-plus in the making, but Axl’s intent is oddly simple: he sees GNR not as a gutter-rock band but as a pomp-rock vehicle for him to lash out against all those that don’t trust him, whether it’s failed friends, lapsed fans, ex-lovers, former managers, fired band mates or rock critics. Chinese Democracy is the best articulation of this megalomania as could be possible, so the only thing to quibble about is his execution which occasionally is perplexing, particularly when Rose slides into hammy vocal inflections or encourages complicated guitar that only guitarists appreciate (it’s telling that the only memorable phrases from Robin Finck, Buckethead or Bumblefoot or whoever are ones that mimic Slash’s full-throated melodic growl). Even with these odd flourishes, it’s hard not to marvel, either in respect or bewilderment, at dense, immaculate wall of god knows how many guitars, synthesizers, vocals and strings.

The production is so dense it’s hard to warm to, but it fits the music. These aren’t songs that grab and hold, they’re songs that unfold, so much so that Chinese Democracy may seem a little underwhelming upon its first listen: it’s not just the years of pent-up anticipation, it’s that Axl spent so much time creating the music — constructing the structure then filling out the frame — that there’s no easy way into the album. That, combined with the realization that Axl isn’t trying to reinvent GNR, just finishing what he started on the Illusions, can make Chinese Democracy seem mildly anticlimactic but Rose spent a decade plus working on this — he deserves to not have it dismissed on a cursory listen. Give it time, listening like it was 1998 not 2008, and the album does give up some terrific music - music that is overblown but not overdone. True, those good moments are the song that have kicked around the internet for the entirety of the new millennium: the slinky, spiteful “Better,” slowly building into its fury; the quite gorgeous, if heavy handed, “Street of Dreams;” “There was a Time,” which overcomes its acronym and lack of chorus on its sheer drama,; “Catcher in the Rye,” the lightest, brightest moment here; the slow, grinding “I.R.S.;” and “Madagascar,” a ludicrous rueful rumination that finds space for quotations from Martin Luther King amidst its trip-hop pulse. These aren’t innovations, they’re extensions of “Breakdown” and “Estranged,” epics that require some work to decode because Axl forces the listener to meet him on his own terms. This all-consuming artistic narcissism has become Rose’s defining trait, not letting him move forward, only to relentlessly explore the same territory over and over again. And this solipsism turns Chinese Democracy into something strangely, surprisingly simple: it won’t change music, won’t change any lives, it’s just 14 more songs about loneliness and persecution. Or as Axl put it in an apology for canceled concerts in 2006, “In the end, it’s just an album.” And it’s a good album, no less and no more.

I just heard the leak and it's EPIC. A true masterpiece. I'm definitely getting this Monday, what about you?

Remember when Kanye West threatened to make an album where he would bear his heartbroken soul, align with T-Pain, sing on every song with the then inescapable Auto-Tune effect and, less problematically, lean on the common element — the Roland TR-808 drum machine — of classics like “Make It Last Forever,” “Posse on Broadway,” “808,” and “Bossy”? It would have been a wreck, a case of an artist working through paralyzing heartache while loose in a toy store. Except West wasn’t joking. Not only did he go through with it, but Roc-A-Fella released the result in time for the 2008 Christmas shopping season. It was indeed a wreck, if a kind of fascinating one, which helped make the material — voiced by someone who could not really sing, whose substantial shortcomings were not made less obvious by a polarizing studio device — seem a little less difficult on the ears.

In various spots across 808s & Heartbreak, the constant flutter of West’s processed voice, along with a seldom interrupted sluggish march of aching sounds, is enlivened by the disarming manner in which despair and dejection are conveyed. When, in “Welcome to Heartbreak,” he dispassionately recounts sitting alone on a flight, ahead of a laughing family, he makes first class sound like Siberia; he’d swap lives with the father in an instant. The majority of the lyrics, however, are directed at an ex who evidently did some damage; in “RoboCop” alone, she gets compared to the antagonist in Misery and is called a “spoiled little L.A. girl.” Earlier in the album, the number she did on him is called “the coldest story ever told,” yet he admits he still fantasizes about her. All the blocky drums, dragging strings, droning synths, and joyless pianos lead to a bleak set of productions — even the synthetic calliope in “Heartless” is unnerved, and the relative pep of “Paranoid” provides no respite, its bitter lyrics subverting a boisterous beat. Several tracks have almost as much in common with irrefutably bleak post-punk albums, such as New Order’s Movement and the Cure’s Pornography, as contemporary rap and R&B. (”Coldest Winter,” where West longs for his departed mother, samples the most desolate song from the first Tears for Fears album.) For anyone sifting through a broken relationship and self-letdown, this could all be therapeutic. Otherwise, no matter its commendable fearlessness, the album is a listless, bleary trudge along West’s permafrost.