Just Musix 4
The tale of an epically delayed epic!
Maturing in the cellar as long as Heftig!
Wave upon wave of demented music demo makers, march cheerfully out of
obscurity into the dream, as Pink Floyd might have put it, if they were
aware of the demoscene and music compilation disks.
As they weren't, it is up to us to give an account of this huge and
definitely Falcon-orientated music collection, sitting years in the waiting.
Now this is the fourth in the 'Just Musix' series, a collection designed to
cater for the larger and more ambitious multi-channel module, as opposed to
the smaller 'Chippin' for Air' series of chipsound collections. (Who still
has nightmares from that Toodeloo on the toilet intro sequence?!)
The original intention was to fix a release date for 1998, but various
events overtook this, including a digression into CT2 acceleration, then
fixing the Graoumf sound sources to run on it, and then followed a crisis of
making the updated source run decently on a standard Falcon. Eventually,
many years later, one of the co-collaborators, 505, reminded DHS that this
collection was still unfinished business, and so they motivated themselves
to get it out of the door at last, in 2005.
In keeping with the high ambitions of the project, the download size is on
the large size, around 9 meg, which is big for a Falcy demo, or about 30-odd
minutes pleasant chat on atariscne irc channel, whilst it quietly downloads
in the background on a 56k connection.
Unzipping it reveals an impressive total of 28 modfiles, as well as separate
standard and accelerator friendly executables. Yes, DHS have managed to
sidestep the question of unfriendly replay code, by making separate
versions. The standard program has a menu selector and timer, and that's it.
The accelerator friendly version also has a semi-transparent graphical
swirling effect on the menu, and a scroller infotext at the bottom of the
screen. It also gets a full replay rate of 50khz too. Of course, the overall
look and feel is very refined, higher res, and high quality. There was a bit
of nervousness with the CT60, as it seems some machine's don't like either
version, unless you turn the processor cache off beforehand. In practice, I
didn't get any problems, but then again, I've not played every tune right
through to the end yet.
We are really here for the music, and this aspect does not disappoint. A
variety of rich full-bodied multi-channel tunes are on show here, anything
up to sixteen channels each, with the full range of effects that the .GT2
standard can support.
This collection is a bit of a memorial, as 'dead' artistes like Toodeloo
feature prominently, his clear and concise techno style, varied with some
nice 'slow' piano based tracks, is a treat on the ears. We also get some
musical treats from Mr Future and Opus, and the distinctive ravey 'PC-XM'
sound of Cedyn gets in here too.
Currently active musicians are here too, with a big input from 505. His own
distinctive style familiar from later efforts on Ace Tracker is represented
here. Of course, it all sounds great, a true hi-fidelity aural experience,
of the sort that the Falcon can deliver to perfection, and don't take this
the wrong way, a refreshing change from the deluge of more recent soundchip
based work. (Even though these are cool too.)
With Just Musix 4, we have a vastly delayed chairbreaker of a music demo,
which might actually be timely in its delayed release, thanks to the
difference from the current soundchipped run of music stuff. The Falcon
modfile sound revival starts here! Ace Tracker music colly anyone?"
Pro's..
It's an epic!
Does full justice to the Grauomf way of making music.
Accelerator friendly version.
Good overall design and presentation.
The music has not dated, demo overall has aged well.
Con's..
It's a huge download (ah well, can't be helped.)
Damn, it's late!
There's a little sadness in realising that some contributing artistes are
'dead' on the scene.
CiH, for Alive Mag,March '05..
|
