The Daily Omnivore

Ghosts I–IV is the sixth studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released in 2008. The team behind the project included Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor, studio-collaborators Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder, and instrumental contributions from Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew, and Brian Viglione.

Reznor described the music of Ghosts as ‘a soundtrack for daydreams,’ a sentiment echoed by many critics who compared it with the work of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. The songs are unnamed, and are identified only by their track listing and group number.

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The Good, the Bad & the Queen is the album by an unnamed British alternative rock supergroup, made up of Damon Albarn, The Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Simon Tong of The Verve, and Tony Allen, the drummer and musical director of Fela Kuti’s band Africa 70. The album released in 2007.

Albarn has stated in several interviews that the band itself is unnamed, and that ‘The Good, The Bad & The Queen’ is simply the name of the album only. It is stated that the record is, in a sense, a concept album, as its songs are all themed around modern life in London. As of 2011, the band has not released any new material, though Simon Tong and Paul Simonon both made appearances on Damon Albarn’s next project, the third Gorillaz album ‘Plastic Beach.’

Hot Sauce Committee Part Two is the eighth studio album by the Beastie Boys released in May 2011. Originally planned for release in 2009 under the title ‘Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 1,’ the album was delayed after Adam Yauch was diagnosed with cancer.

The working title was ‘Tadlock’s Glasses,’ which was stated to be a reference to a former bus driver named Tadlock, who used to drive for Elvis Presley’s back-up singers. Presley once gave Tadlock a pair of glasses which he was proud of. Regarding the structure of the album, Yauch stated, ‘It’s a combination of playing and sampling stuff as we’re playing, and also sampling pretty obscure records. There are a lot of songs on the record and there are a lot of short songs and they kind of all run into each other.’

DJ-Kicks is a series of DJ mix albums, mixed by various artists for the independent record label !K7 Records. The series started out in 1995 as a compilation of electronic DJ club-style mixes in the techno or house genres, with the then-novel twist of being targeted to a home listening audience. Soon afterwards, both the choice of compilers and the genres included were expanded: In addition to DJs, more and more producers (like Terranova), remixers (like Kruder & Dorfmeister), bands (like the Stereo MCs) and musicians (like Nicolette) compiled DJ-Kicks albums. The actual music began to vary wildly as well, ranging from Trüby Trio’s downbeat jazz sound to Kemistry & Storm’s aggressive drum and bass. Still, all contributions remain broadly within the electronic music genre.

The first DJ-Kicks release was C.J. Bolland’s in 1995, and the series is still regularly expanded. As of October 2006, there are 28 releases in the series, with a release rate of roughly two to three new ones each year. Some of the DJ-Kicks mixes are very popular and counted among the regular albums of the compiler, most notably the one by Kruder & Dorfmeister. The DJ-Kicks series has been called ‘the most important DJ-mix series ever’ by Mixmag.