Music preview: Cross The Line review

Another facet of my blog is going to involve reviewing new albums and single I pick up, mainly in the genres of drum & bass and UK hardcore. October 2011 has been a good month for D&B, and it started with Camo & Krooked's album Cross The Line, released October 3rd on Hospital Records in multiple formats: a vinyl EP, a CD, and two different digital editions (the Special Edition contains four bonus tracks). This was the first album for C&K on Hospital, and their second overall. It's somewhat of a departure from their previous material, with harder-hitting, more dancefloor-friendly drum & bass, dubstep, and a bit of electro house. From the first track, "Let's Get Dirty", it takes off and doesn't let go until the end. My personal favorites are "Run Riot" with its massive buildup and even bigger drumstep drop, saw-happy "Anubis", the addictive "Make The Call" (the album's second single), former Deadmau5 remix "Watch It Burn", and special-edition exclusives "Cryptkeeper", "Portal" and "Change Me" (the latter being the favorite of this blog's namesake). The rest of the album is good, too. I was a little disappointed by the BPM-shifting "Hot Pursuit", which had potential to be a liquid-neuro monster but spends more than a little too much time in the dubstep zone to really live up to its name. Overall, I highly recommend this album for either dubstep or D&B fans, as it has plenty for both.

Another recurring feature of the blog debuting with this entry is the "Chesterfield County Street Blade Route Number Error of the Month". A pet peeve of mine has been Chesterfield County's disuse of the usual secondary route postings for Virginia (shields and white rectangles), instead opting to post the route numbers on their street blade signs (for non-roadgeeks, those are the signs with the road name on them). In addition to being nearly impossible to read, these postings occasionally have an incorrect route number on them. The most common error I've seen is posting River Road as VA 36 several miles past its western end (even past where it ever ended). This is the intersection of River Road (SR 602 by this point) and Riverway Road (SR 659).

From Various signage

I drove further down River Road past this intersection yesterday, and it's posted with its correct number everywhere west of this intersection, so maybe Chesterfield had the same idea I did about extending VA 36.