*********************************** AM/FM ***********************************   Title : Musicland Producer : Brainstorm 17 Bit No : 2435 No. Disks : 1 No. Tracks : 5 Musician : Axel  This music disk kicks off quite nicely, with the screen opening like a window to reveal the credits, accompanied by some mechanical sound effects. As the disk loads in, a little piece of music plays along; not bad, it just let's you know something is happening before the menu loads up. Up pops the menu, and we have five pieces of music to choose from. Tecnology : Starting with an interesting guitar based intro; not the normal heavy-metal power chord, but just a regular strum, it's soon accompanied by a bass line made up using a variety of acid-type bass samples. After a lot of chord changes, and a string based melody line, the song slows itself down. A dramatic change of pace, which enables it to highlight some of the other samples to great effect, especially the basses. Gathering up momentum one more, it returns to the main string chord theme, with a nice variety of melodies. At the close of the song, some previously unheard string samples all come together for a very mellow ending. An excellent song with great samples. I'm always impressed when I can't figure out how the composer of the song managed to squeeze all that great sound into four channels. Rating 8.  Shining Love : It's another very mellow piece, using some light drums, string chords, and a string/organ sample as the melody instrument. A sax takes over later as the lead instrument, and it's not bad as sax samples go, but not great. Although the melody was constantly changing, and the lead intrument samples we're swapped around a few times, it did all begin to sound very samey after a while. The main drums, bass, and sting chords played the same thing all the way through; it wasn't until the very end that the bass played a small solo, and by then it was just too late. Good samples again, but the song was pretty unimpressive. Rating 5½. Funky Ecstasy : This is a funk tune surprisingly enough, and quite funky it is too. Using the same strumming guitar sample as "Technology", and of course, a slap bass sample, this track also features a variety of brass samples. It's quite a long song, at just over six minutes, but thankfully because of all the key, tempo, and melody changes, it never lets hard to listen to. Most of this song is pretty fast, which fits the funk mood well, but right at the end of the song, some moody string samples take over to eventually create a very sombre ending; an interesting twist. This song works because of the great samples, the guitar, bass, and brass samples just fit together perfectly for this song. Rating 7. Piano Goes Blues : I was looking forward to this, being a bit of a blues fan myself, but I was dissapointed. Here's why - The song starts with a solitary ride cymbal sample, and is quickly joined by a walking accoustic bass line. This is in turn joined by piano chord sample, playing a shuffle rhythm, okay so far, but.. the lead sample. An organ sample; it sounds so detached from the rest of the song, and just doesn't fit in at all. It's the same problem with the piano solo, it just sounds wrong, and so doesn't do much for the bluesy feel. It's a shame, a good idea, but unfourunatley very badly executed. Rating 4. I'll Take it Fried : This is one of those nice relaxing mellow songs. Y'know the sort of thing I mean, soft string, and choral samples, coupled together with a piano and sax melody. That's what we've got here anyway, and it's pretty unremarkable. The piano is quite nicely done, and is much better than the piano in "Piano goes Blues", which is a relief. And that's it, yes it's quite pleasent and relaxing, but it doesn't really go anywhere, and won't make you really sit up and listen. Rating 6½. *********************************** AM/FM ***********************************  Composistions - It's fairly obvious that all these songs were composed by the same person. There are quite a few similarities in some of the songs, especially concerning the use of the Bass/Drums/String chord accompliment. They we're all original pieces, which always seems to be a bonus these days, but personally I felt they were a bit lacking in variety. A few more distint changes in melody, and in particular the pre-mentioned accompliment would have given each song more individuality. Rating 6. Samples - Just about free of any buzzes, hisses, bad loop points, or anything else like that. It's just that a few of the samples were overused a little. The sax, which didn't sound great, turned up in at least three songs, along with the same string chord sample. This is probably why I found the composistions were lacking in variety. I'd only heard a few of the samples before, so mainly good fresh sounding sounds. Rating 7½. Presentation : Some good coding went into putting this disk together. The waiting for songs to load became a thing of the pass, as all the songs were loaded into memory as the disk booted up, and then were decrunched and played when selected. This could explain the duplication in instruments, because having five songs in memory with all different instruments would appear to be quite a remarkable squeeze for my one meg machine. Apart from the song menu, there is a text menu (like a scroll menu, except there are no scrollers on this disk), and an info part, for useful information on each song, accompanied by some nice graphics, and finaly a credits screen. There was also a little graphical gauge that filled up as the song played, so you get a graphical representation of how much song is left. A well thought out system. Rating 7½. AM/FM Rating - A nicely put together disk, no doubt about that, some good original tunes, and some great samples. A bit more variety would have made it so much better, but as it is, it's certainly worth a disk, and at least a few hours to sit back and have a listen to. Rating 7. *********************************** AM/FM ***********************************