Hendrix - Valleys of Neptune

Got this two days ago and I'm liking it better than "South Saturn Delta", the last release of "new" material. For one thing, there's no half-assed uncompleted demo (Angel), no crap studio version of a blistering live song (The Stars that Play with Laughing Sam's Dice) nor are the best songs lengthy instrumentals (Pali Gap et al). I do have to say that the cover of "Sunshine of Your Love" needs some vocals. "Ships Passing through the Night" is an early version of "Night Bird Flying" and is pretty alright. The other new songs are good. The alternate versions of "Stone Free", "Fire" and "Red House" are also pretty okay, and aren't half-completed versions. "Haer My Train A-Coming" has me longing for applause cos the live version's the one I'm familiar with. B+

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

This is good. I only didn't like Snoop Dogg's appearance. Love the Lou Reed song. The Mark E. Smith appearance is superfluous, he only cites two sentences at the most. And also they've mostly shed their pop star pretensions and came up wih a more valid artistic statement. Granted the songs aren't half as catchy as on "Demon Days", but that's not essentially a bad thing. Fuckin' A!