For some reason, my bootleg copy of The Massacre has all the tracks in reverse order, so it starts with the G-Unit remix of "Hate It Or Love It", and then it goes through all the lame love raps before finally getting to the bangers. It's a weird, disorienting way to hear an album, and it highlights the way G-Unit dudes have pretty much come up with a formula for their albums just as rigid as the one the Chemical Brothers have always used (a couple of bangers into singles into more bangers into lameass love tracks into one final great track vs. squeally big-beat tracks into hazy psychedelic tracks with Beth Orton or someone who sounds like her). It's not a fun way to hear an album. After a couple of listens, The Massacre is sounding really weak. Maybe it'll get better when I hear it the right way, but right now I'm pretty underwhelmed by stuff like "Piggy Bank" and "Ski Mask Way" that internet people seem to love. My bootleg version of The B.Coming is definitely not the real version (songs out of order, wrong levels), but it's great; I cannot wait to hear the finished product. I need to stop buying bootlegs, though. I love the whole experience of waiting for the day an album drops, putting it on for the first time, letting it unfold in your ears with no surprises spoiled and no secrets revealed. Bootleg versions are almost never the real thing, and they always seem to give you little dribs and drabs, only hinting at the dimensions of the real thing. I should save that money for mixtapes instead.

The LCD Soundsystem singles never really blew my head in half; they always just seemed like arch little slices of genre toe-dipping - nice but hardly revolutionary. But the album is gorgeous. The production sounds pretty much perfect, drums hitting just right, bass dissolving into liquid noise-washes, guitar stabs falling from the ceiling. Some of the best tracks sound like waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the night shaking and sweating with the Trax boxset is playing in the next room and Terminator 2 muted on TV and realizing that everything is OK. Every inch of the album, every little production choice or synth flourish or guitar clang is suffused with this sense of joy and confidence and urgency. I really wish I'd made this album.