Recommended: Simon Reynold's compare and contrast on Salon of the new Axl Rose and Kanye West releases. It's unusual to see criticism foregrounding the studio software used by artists almost ahead of music and lyrics; Reynolds notes that Rose and West use these normally invisible processes in a highly visible way, so that they rise to the level of active partnership in the content. This justifies all the attention to ProTools, Autotune, compression, and the "loudness wars." Reynolds' roots in techno-rave criticism (he wrote the book Energy Flash aka Generation Ecstasy) give him an edge over critics who won't know how to talk about the "cyborg" aspect of both recordings.