*********************************** AM/FM ***********************************   Title : Gastric Ulcer Producer : Sonic 17 Bit No : 2442 Musician : Merlin No Disks : 1 No Tracks : 8  Rememeber Acid ? It's back again.. at least it is on this disk anyway. I'd better say up front that I was never a fan of the Acid House scene, but I'll try to put that dislike aside and give the fairest review I can. Here's my top three of the eight tracks. Brain Specialist : Here's a few samples I havn't heard for a while; a whole load of very deep sythetic-sounding basses and strings. These synth basses are used to great effect, as the main bass line, and as a wild lead riff, pitch-bending the sample almost to the point of pulling it out of tune, all pretty good so far. One of my biggest gripes with acid is how amazingly repetitive it really is, the bass line just goes on, and on, with only a few variations in the main riff to mark any differences. Thankfully in this tune there are a couple of vocal samples, "Are you the Brain specialist ? ", and "My brain hurts". These stand out really well because of their stark contrast with the rest of the music, also it's a really funny voice. The best track on the disk, but I still found it too monotonous. Rating 5½. Dance with Caffein : Hang about, this is the same as the last track. Oh no, I tell a lie, it's a little different, but only a little bit. What makes this track sound virtually identical to "Brain Specialist", is the fact that it appears to use almost exactly the same instuments, and is also very similar in terms of the songs construction. We've got the main bass line, with the pitch-bending lead, with a few variations around it. For a while, about two thirds of the way into the track, a type of orchestrial hit sample takes over the main melody, and is joined by a new bass line. Welcome releif, but it's all too short, and soon returns to some more manic pitch-bending. Rating 4½.  Gastric Ulcer : The title track, and also the loading music. It's a short piece at only 1.01 minutes, which obviously doesn't give it much chance to explore all the melodic possibilities, but it does open up with a great intro, sounding for once more like Rave than Acid. After the intro it does, however, return to the now familiar repeating bass line, with loads of pitch-bending. There is a vocal sample hiding in there somewhere, but it doesn't stand out at all, and you're doing pretty well if you can actually make out what it's saying; I couldn't. Rating 4. *********************************** AM/FM ***********************************  Composistions - One of the reasons I've only reviewd three of the tracks individually is because they all sound so similar. At first I thought it was just me, because it's not music I'd generally listen to anyway, but it's not, they really do sound the same. Part of this problem is down to the samples, it sounds as if the same ones have been used on almost all the tracks. But the songs themselves all have the same repeating bass sections, with the few variations around them. It's a bit thin. Rating 3. Samples - I've already mentioned the use of the same samples throughout the disk, but what of the quality. The synth-basses and strings all sounded very good, it's just a shame they we're overused so much. The drums in most tracks wern't too bad, but in several tracks they we're very weak indeed. The quality of the vocal samples was variable, from the very good, "My brain hurts", from "Brain Specialist", too the very poor sample in "Gastric Ulcer". There we're a few other vocal samples dotted around the other tracks which are best described as "Average". Rating 4½. Presentation - Insert the disk, and up comes the first loading screen, full of the various credits for the disk. After pressing the mouse button, the Sonic logo fades in, accompanied first by the "Gastric Ulcer" music, then "Brain Specialist", as the selector screen comes up. Accompanying each piece of music is a colour-cycling fractal (part of the Julia set I think). This takes up all but one line of the screen, and there is no option to turn it off. Migrane sufferers be forewarned, have you're asprin ready. The music is selected by moving the mouse up, and down which cycles through the names of the tracks on the bottom line of the screen, press the left button and you're away. I've just a few complaints, the main one being that I found it incredibly hard to read the font; as far as I can tell, there appears to be a piece of music on this disk called, "Skalaariprajetio" !? Apart from that, give me an option to turn the colour-cycling off and I'd be a happy man. Rating 4. AM/FM Rating - Music is always difficult to categorise, according to my dictionary, Acid is "A corrosive liquid", and Rave is "Talking Wildly". There's no mention of the musical context. Was Rave music a natural progression from Acid, and what has all this got to do with the disk ? Well, I don't know if this disk was intended to be an Acid, or a Rave disk. It would be a bad example of a Rave disk, but as I don't like acid, and I'm not even 100% sure of it's definition, it would be unfair of me to call this a badly put together Acid disk. To me it all sounded to similar by far, and I didn't like it at all, but if you're a complete acid freak, you'll may well really appreciate it. Rating 4. *********************************** AM/FM ***********************************