World Order Genki Sudo

Every Todd Rundgren album seems to have a gimmick, and on this one, which inaugurates his recording relationship with the Forward subsidiary of Rhino Records, the trick is that he recorded almost four hours of musical fragments of four to eight seconds each and put them on an interactive CD so that they could be combined in a nearly infinite number of ways. If you have a CD-I, that is. If you only have a regular old CD player, this non-interactive version presents 10 songs and six variations on them. Rundgren has added rap to his arsenal, his lyrics are more political, and many of the tracks seem aimed at the dance floor. Sounds like music designed to fall through the cracks, right? Rundgren fans will be put off, while the new jack swingers won't bother to listen. But the real problem is that it's just not very good. (By the way, with this release Rundgren anticipated Prince's decision to rename himself in a weird way: he officially became "TR-I," for "Todd Rundgren-Interactive.") (On June 7, 1993, Forward released No World Order–"Lite," an alternate version of the album's 10 tracks, through mail order at a midline price.)

Henry Kissinger offers in World Order a deep meditation on the roots of international harmony and global disorder. Drawing on his experience as one of the foremost statesmen of the modern era—advising presidents, traveling the world, observing and shaping the central foreign policy events of recent decades—Kissinger now reveals his analysis of the ultimate challenge for the twenty-first century: how to build a shared international order in a world of divergent historical perspectives, violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism.