For the first time in my life, I've been feeling Mouse on Mars. I always found them really, really annoying, a couple of German chumps who were totally content to just eff around with baby noises and plinky plonks instead of making, you know, actual music. Then they start doing fun, listenable shit, and I start liking them! Funny how that works. Radical Connection is really pretty good! On most of the tracks, they jink around for a minute before locking into a full-on glorious house beat with just enough bang and scrape to keep it from sounding too boutiquey. The main thing that keeps me from getting too into stuff like Luomo's The Present Lover is the overwhelming smooveness and lack of tension. Radical Connection tends to err in the other direction; there are tracks with lots of experi-bleeps that don't really go anywhere. But mostly it's total hazy fun.

Straight Outta Cashville is sort of a concept album about how great deep thick Southern accents sound over slow cinematic New York clubstomper beats. Even the Lil Jon and Three-6 tracks sound totally Mobb Deep, and Buck totally bleeds over all the tracks. A year ago, I thought Buck was the weak link in the G-Unit, but he's the only one who hasn't gotten all complacent and arrogant; he sounds really hungry on most of these tracks, and he always stays locked in with the beat. "Bang Bang" really got me from left-field; I wasn't expecting anything like that at all, and it sounds gorgeous. The G-Unit still can't make a good song about girls, but other than that it's a really good album.