Labels:text | screenshot OCR: AM/FM : Music Compilation Disk Title Producers Cybernix 2623 17 Bit No: Musicians: No. Disks: 1 Unknown/Not stated No. Tracks: 10 AM/FM After several screens of things like, "Cybernix", and "Presents", and stuff like that, up comes a nice piccy of a robot, and the music starts to play. With 10 tracks on offer, I can't bring myself to write about all of them, so I'll mention some of them that stand out for various reasons. Track 1 : Yes, the tracks themselves don't actually have names, they just load on in, so don't misguided into thinking that this disk has ten remixes of a song called "Track", it's just I don't know the names. Anyway, this first song is a cover of 2 Unlimited hugely succesfull, "Get ready for this", sampling heavily from the recording. Although the basic tune is there, there is a bit of a problem with the quality of the samples. Apart for being a bit hissy, a good few of them, them, most moticably the vocal samples, had bits of background music on them, on them, mostly a few drum beats. These drum beats then clashed with the actual intended drum track, and the whole thing sounded way out of time. Quite a poor conversion. Rating 3 Track 3: I picked this track out for two reasons, firstly because it's one of the better ones on the disk, and secondly because it's quite typical of the apparant age of most of them. This is one of the zillions of Amiga "Axel F" conversions. Even with all the different conversions of Axel F, they all generally sounded the same, because back then most people were still using the ST-01: disks to get all there samples from. I'm not going to go into detail about the song, if you havn't heard Axel F, then welcome back because you must have been in a coma for the last 8 years or so. A pretty good conversion, but what's it doing on a newly released disk?. Rating 4 Track 4 Oh, how annoying, I've heard this before, albeit several years ago, and I can't remember what it's called or what demo it came off, never mind though. The actual basic rhythm is okay, the combination of string chords, and a relaxed bass and drums go together quite well, but the melody is carried by a guitar sample. It's not all that bad, but it is a little overpowering, and so doesn't fit in quite as neatly as it could. Coupled with this we have the worse case of overusing an orchestrial hit sample I've ever heard, I mean it even has it's own solo. But with all it's faults it is actually one of the better tracks on the disk. Rating 4. Track 5: Here's another one I recognise, in fact I'm sure I've got this lying around on a disk somewhere, but you'll have to excuse me if I'm too lazy to look through several hundred disk, just to find out if it has a name or mot. Once again it's several years old, and is based around a fairly simple rhythm track. The rhythm stays absolutly rigid, chord changes being the only deviation (Working a lot like an auto-accompiant on a keyboard). This just leaves the melody, in which a pleasent, if rather unexciting string chord sample plays thoughout. Quite nice. Rating 5 Compositions - I bet you all think I'm really lazy, only reviewing four songs, when there's ten on the disk. What I could quite easily do is write the same review six times for the remaining tracks, there all old, quite unremarkable, and share a lot of the same faults. These faults seem to have been popular misconceptions of the era that these songs were written, for example. If you use a guitar sample, you should play it as loud, and as often as possible. If you've got a catchy bassline, then you don't need a decent melody. If you use a vocal sample, then you should do things like, h▬h▬h▬h▬h-h▬h▬h▬h▬h-h▬h-h-h-h-hhouse, h-h-h- etc. all the time. Of course there all completely untrue, but you'd be suprised to see how many times these 'rules' were apparantly followed in the songs. Rating 3 Samples - Really very below average, do you remember all the old ST-01: samples like, Shamus, KorgString, Celeste ? Well, there all here again. The quality of sampling in todays compositions are just so much better, it's hard to compare them. Of course the only semi-new song of this disk, track 1 (Get ready for this) has loads of faults in the sampling, I've already mentioned. Rating 3. Presentation – A nice picture of a pretty lady robot, as I've said, but unlike most music disks, where you get to choose the music you hear, on this one you have to listen to each one in turn, pressing the mouse button to load in the mext tune. It's not very friendly is it? Rating 3 I'm not saying that all music composed before the start of this year is all crap, on the contrary there are some real five-year old gems around. Unfourtunatly on this disk, you don't get them, you get a few okay ones, but mostly useless old dross. Sorry Cybernix. Rating 3. AM/FM
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