Labels:text | screenshot OCR: AM/FM Title : Mirror Producer : Andromeda 17 Bit No: 2398A, 2898B No Disks 2 No Tracks 9 Musicians Mr. Man, Lord Interface, Lizard The sound of a choir gently fades in, accompanied by a Mirror logo. This in turn fades to a vector mirror bouncing around on a checker board, as the front-end loads in. The main menu screen spins into view, presenting the many other menus. Nine pieces of music are on offer, here are my top 5: Beneath Dignity : The best piano samples ever? Quite possibly. I knew this song was going to be good when I heard the solo piano intro. It's not just piano all the way through though, this song, somehow, also finds room to include the full bass, drums and strings accompliment. There's even a guitar solo. Okay, SO the guitar sample doesn't actually sound like a guitar, (I wouldn't have known it was a guitar if I hadn't read the module info part) but it does fit the song very well. I could listen to this song for hours. (and in fact I have) It's melody is superb, it builds up, and up, and then right at it's peak, it changes it's key and it's style, and turns into something else. I find this song very hard to fault, one of the best of it's type. Rating 9. Time the Remedy: Here's another slow piece, the very mellow strings setting the tone, with a light piano melody in the background. The lead is first taken by a chorale sample, and later on by a sax sample. Generally sax samples don't work, this one does. It might not sound exactly like a proper sax, but it fits into the rest into the rest of the song, and the style of the piece mante perfectly. The sax goes on goes on to play quite a prominent part in the song, playing one line, which which is in turn answered by the piano. The piano, once again, sounds excellent, and goes on to play quite a few small solos, mixing several different styles of music into the one piece very successfully. Another great song. Rating 9. Pastel Blue : This is one of the most interesting Reggae songs I've ever heard. It's built up of three smaller songs, which all have light reggae overtones, but have been "danced" up quite a bit. The first sub-song is a "normal" reggae piece, although, because of the choice of instruments, it's quite hard to tell it apart from a normal dance song, this gives way to something quite strange. Still reggae, but now, because of some very different samples, it sounds Egyptian! The final sub-song just about drops the reggae bit altogether, and becomes a dance song; mixing a very nice flute sample, with a modern dance beat. The three songs don't amount to much more than three minutes, and it's unique sound is difficult to put into words. Of course the main point is that it sounds pretty good, and is above all very interesting to listen to. Rating 7. Stormbringer : This is another short song, at only 2.12 minutes, but it manages to accomplish a lot in it's short play time. Starting off with a march like drum beat, and accompanied by some very Jarre-esq strings, I though we were going to have another slowy here, especially when it started playing the strings on all channels, sounding more and more like Jarre as it went; but then it all changed. Bringing in an eletric guitar sample, returning to the drums, and speeding up considerably, it turn into a totally different kind of song. It didn't stop there, this song carried on evolving, managing to incorparate quite a few different styles of music together, and still making it all fit. It's apparantly 2-3 years old, but apart from usual few recognisable samples, in a song this age, it didn't sound old at all, it just sounded very good. Rating 8. Dark Side Like "Stormbringer", this song manages to merge several different styles of music into the one piece. into the one piece. Starting slow, and moody with a gentle string melody, and a slow bass track, it starts to pick up with it's flute lead. After that, it leads into a faster, and once again Jarre-like theme, highlighting the strings, and sound effects, as the flute continues upon it's melody. Finally the bass doubles it's tempo, and we're launched into an all out dance tune, with several synth-like instruments making an apperance. Allthough separately, the various "themes" of this song might not be so impressive, when there mixed together this well, they turn into something very special. Rating 8. AM/FM Compositions - Wow, two disks full of wonderfull (That's "wonderful" - [Ed] :-) original songs. One thing the composers have in common is the ability to mix in several different styles of music into the one piece, this is an obvious improvement over the same style of music just repeating itself for five minutes or or so. While the other four songs wern't quite as good as the five I picked out, they were still very good songs, and certainly deserve having the volume turned up on your stereo. Rating 8. Samples I haven't really mentioned the quality of the samples in the songs, except for the piano samples in "Beneath Dignity", and "Times the Remedy", which were excellent. I'm very pleased to say that all the other samples were of a similar quality, there wasn't one sample that didn't fit the song, or was a bit out of tune or anything. The string samples in particular warrant a special mention, in most cases I couldn't even tell where the loop-point was, it was set that well. Where did all these samples come from then ? According to the module-info section, a mouth-watering cross section of synths, such as an Alesis D4, Roland JV-80, D-10, D-20, D-50, D-70, Korg M1, T1, and that's just a few of them. Absolutaly faultless sampling. Rating 9⁰. * Presentation - Andromeda really know how to put a slick system together. The usual menus are are here : Music, Scrollys, greetings, and of course the Module-info, and Credits part. It also has the inclusion of a graphics menu, so you can sit back and look at one of the four fantasy-inspired pictures while you listen to the music. So why is the system so good? Well, apart from the screens being very well laid out, and the system working, everything moves ! Select a menu and the screen spins out to reform, and spin back in, with usually some sort of demo effect going on as well. Okay, it's just cosmetic really, and I admit it, I like to watch things spinning around the screen, but hey, why not? There's just a couple of things (isn't there always) that would have made it perfect. The biggest point being that it doesn't support two drives, why not? The songs state clearly on the menu which disk there on, so it isn't too much of an inconvienience, but come on, surely most people have two drives these days. The second, and more insignificant point, is that the scrolltext goes up the screen at a ninety degree angle, so if your serious about reading it, you'll either end up with a stiff neck, or you'll give in, and have to turn you monitor on it's side. Rating 8. AM/FM Rating - It should be obvious if you've read this far, that I like these music disks, and I do. But I admit, I'm am absolute sucker for a good piano melody, with some nice strings over the top, so if you motto in life is, "I live for Raves", you might not appreciate it as much as I did. But I'm certain that most of you will fall in love with some of these songs, they're excellent, don't delay, go out and get these disks NOW !!! Rating 8. AM/FM
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