I feel like it’s time for me to make myself clear about an album opinion as seen in this post to weeks ago. As you can see I listed Kanye West’s new 808’s & Heartbreak as one of the “not so good” cds. After two weeks of listing I have to admit I was wrong, or maybe just not clear enough. The album (especially the first half) is really good. I still think that Kanye’s a better rapper than singer, and I’d love to hear a new album that’s more like Graduation. Nevertheless the new cd is an interesting and – at least for me – inspiring experiment. Some of the songs are catchy, but what I like most about this album is the artist’s determination in using the Roland TR-808 as drum machine for all the tracks. If you check out the info about the TR-808 you’ll notice that it’s a pretty basic piece of equipment with mainly 16 programable buttons for the drum sounds!
Now the best part: if you’re a Mac user you already have GarageBand. What I found out was that the TR-808 emulator is available as part of the Remix Jam Pack from Apple! So you can simply make the exactly same sounds and if you’re good enough, produce something that sounds very much like Kanye’s latest album. Now that’s why I love Macs!
