Labels:text | screenshot OCR: AM/FM MUSIC DISK REVIEW: Title Producer : Skyboard 17 Bit No: 2352 Disks : 1 Tracks : 6 Musician : Unstated AM/FM all very The menu Upon loading this disk, I was greeted by a sample from "Star Trek", nice, but a little out of context with the rest of the disk. consists of a simple IFF picture with the names of the six tracks placed upon it. Now to tracks themselves.. Acid Snap - The thing that first struck me about this song was how repetitive it was. It's main theme' consits of a rave type backing track to which the two vocal samples "Go", and "Lets go" are played over. Somewhere around the middle of this track, an attempt is made to insert the intro to Snap's "Rythem is a Dancer", but using a completley inappropriate intrument, some sort of beepy bell sample. The other samples throughout the track wern't too hot either, auidible whistles, and background hiss was noticible on most of them. Rating - 2 Rave Mix 1 - Essentailly this is Essentailly this is a remix of Bizzare Inc's "Playing with Knives". Several pieces of the record are in this mix, most recognizably the house-style piano part, along with a Rave-style bass track. This song also contains the same rave backing track as the previous offering, though in this incantation, it's sampled slightly better. The rest of the samples arn't too bad either, a little noise on some of them, but that can be forgiven. Although this track has more variety than "Acid Snap", it does still suffer the same problem of a little too much repetition. Rating - 4 Rave Mix 2 - This is a re-working of Moby's "Go", which is in itself a raved up version of Twin Peaks', "Laura Palmers theme". It's evident that the string samples havn't been taken from the record since it's just a little off key. Not a lot, but just about enough to notice. The rest of the rather short track really just consists of a few different drum tracks, with the two vocal samples, "Go", and "Yeah-ah" making the occasional apperances. Yet again the crux of the problem with this track lies in its repetiveness, it's just not varied enough to keep the listener interested. The samples are of a similar quality to the last track, not bad, but not great. Rating - 3 Crave-for-Rave - This is a version of "Quadraphonia", by the group of the same name. It's not badly put together at all, and is certainly the best track on the disk. The main riff from the record, using the ubiquitous orchestral hit samples, is is here, and is done quite well, so it's a shame that it's let down somewhat by a terrible drum sample that's so fuzzy I couldn't tell if it was meant to be a bass drum, or a snare drum. A syth-string sample is also used at the start of the track, and while the sampling on it is acceptable enough, the loop-point is way out, leaving leaving a really noticible jump as the sample loops. Apart from the two I've just mentioned, the rest of the samples are quite adequate, but certainly not outstanding. There's a good few breaks in this track in which some of the other samples are heard, although the bass in one of them seemed a little out of place, and would have been better replaced by a sample with a little more power. Thankfully there's a lot more variety in this track, and it doesn't suffer so much with the problem of repetition. Rating 5 Smooth Core - This track starts with a reasonable enough string sample, but the syth playing alongside it is off key, and more than just a little bit. After a minute or so this is joined by the bass. It's a great bass sample, infact just the one "Crave-for-Rave" could have done with, but as good as the bass is, it doesn't make the synth sample sound any more in tune. But wait, it gets worse, after another minute or so the track is joined by the almost antique "Shamus" sample, from soundtrackers ST-01: disk. This is also completly out of tune, and the track really starts becoming painful to listen to. This is a very, very bad track, it's only two slightly redeeming features are the nice bass sample, and the fact that it's quite short. I don't wish to sound callous, but I've heard better from tone-deaf goldfish. Rating - 1 — Total Raveness This track is at least a little different from the others, it starts with a a standard dance drum-track, which is accompanied by a nicely done, if wholly unoriginal acid bass line. Whilst another "normal" bass line plays along, the other sound channel is filled by a few of the other samples in this song, which swap around every few patterns or so. At one stage, a sample which sounds like its been lifted from a spooky part of a film replaces the acid bass for a while. An interesting idea, but not very well implemented. The standard of the samples used throughout are best described as variable, while the acid bass samples are pretty good, the rest of them are a little below par. It's the same old story with this track, although an attempt at originallity has been made, it's very repetitive, and unlikely to hold your attention for the duration of the song. Rating - 3 Compositions : These tracks certainly don't push the music boundries of the Amiga. Their main problem lies in repetiveness, all suffer from varying degrees of this, some very badly. The tracks are not exactly original either, there's nothing wrong with doing an Amiga version of a popular song, but there is if it's not done very well, and if a lot of other people have already done it before. Rating - 3⁰ Samples : Quite a mixed bag of samples, some of the tracks have a few samples that are very good, and others contain some real dogs. Most of the samples that were not taken off records, I'd heard in other Amiga music, so don't expect too many fresh sounds here. Rating - 5 Presentation : Although the graphical presentation only consisted of a couple of static screens, the system was functional enough. Simply press F1-6 for the track of your choice, and along comes the music. Press escape to turn the music off, and then select another one. Rating - 5 AM/FM Rating: Oh dear, this ratings not going to look too rosey is it? From reading this review so far, you probably think I hate all the tracks on this disk. Not true, I only hate a couple of them. The others all could have all been so much better by simply cleaning up the samples, and doing a bit of re-writing, so so they don't sound the same all the way through. With only one okay song ("Crave-for-Rave"), I can only advise that you steer well clear of this disk, unless your a really big fan of Quadraphonia, and this is the only version you can find. Rating - 3 AM/FM : Music Disk 1
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