warptYMe
by the YM Rockerz
It was always going to be hard to see how the YM Rockerz were going to be
able to follow up their startlingly different production 'tymewarp'. This
earlier music disk featured a coherent story, set to some time-travelling
misadventures and an early eighties arcade machine. We had to wait well over
a year from then, until August 2006, when YM Rockerz sort of did the obvious
thing, and carried on the 'tYMe travelling'but flipped the concept on its
head.
"1984, mission accomplished."
"With an earshattering noise, the tYMe-machine vanished into nothingness."
And they are off...
We are treated to something a little bit more dynamic than you might expect
from a music disk, a tunnely treat from the rarely seen Ultra, who produces
an ST-tastic warp tunnel effect so reminiscent of the Dead Hackers, c.1998.
This is the dramatic device used to get our boys from 1984, to the far
future! The year is 2149 AD.Now why does that pattern of numbers look
strangely familiar? There is a nice and chirpy tune with lots of sid and new
style effects, which turns out to have been done by an old friend of the
Atari scene, none other than Mad Max!
Unfortunately, due to a malfunction, they arrive in rather less style than
they first hoped for!
The gang arrive at a new destination, but gwEm is still sure it isn't Soho!
In fact everything looks all strange and futuristic. Upon entering the
nearby Museum of Humankind, they get into the vast news archive, and find
out that their dream of destroying the major record labels happened in their
absence, as a result of their disappearance in fact.
I guess the public were fearing more attacks from Ninja Droids, so they
boycotted the majors out of existence!?
'warptYMe'inverts the membership requirements of its predecessor. It
specifies tunes made with newschool trackers like maxYMizer, and the new
versions of Triplex and Musicmon. The tracks themselves also have to be as
futuristic and freaked out as possible, which seems to be fair enough. At
this point, the demo reverts to a more conventional menu selection and bunch
of tunes format.
The menu screen is green but futuristic, supervised by an alien or super-
evolved humanoid cradling a mystical YM 2149 chip in his fingers.
Incidentally, if he is a member of an advanced species, what's with the
tubes coming out of the back of the head? A more primitive homo sapiens like
you or I could shout rude names at him, and it's not as if he could come
running after us with all that gubbins attached, eh?!
As always, a range of the more interesting composers have been minded to
take part, here is the rundown on those sounds.
Tao - "M143R1"- Starts with an homage to vinyl beat, an emulated long
player record at the end of its tracks left unattended on the record player.
A slowly building tune with fairly standard SID style effects and melodies,
not really a memorable Tao tune.
Lotek Style - "Crushed the Majors"- Initially seems to be using earlier
methods of soundchip synthesis, but goes newschool when main part of the
tune kicks in. Comes across as freaky and funky at the same time.
Timbral - "Junkie 2149"- Straight in with a nice swooping SID melody, very
easy on the ear, I like this! There is a even a little bit of a sound
sampled voice creeping in, sort of a micro-rap.
DMA-SC - "Trials" - Mixture of heavy drum and bass, and soaring SID
melodies. A very Amiga-soundchip feel in places.
Crazy Q - "Phunky Shapeshifter 2149"- Starts with a wacky beat,
concentrates on the freaky and funky delivery. Lots of twiddly sound effects
are very well deployed.
gwEm - "Future gone wrong"- Mixture of high soaring SID melody and sampled
drums give this a heavier and graunchier feel than some of the other
entries. There is an impressive use of bass too. It's more like a Stu tune
later on as well!
Marcer - "The 5th experiment"- It's Marcer! Extreme soundchip mangling
takes place here! Marcer also can carry a tune well, which makes him a
double favourite in these eardrums!
505 - "052" - Throws everything into the mix, zik effects, samples, but it
is over very quickly. I get the feeling he was holding back a bit like Tao?
(Especially considering his totally kick-ass entry for the MaxYMizer music
competition.)
Dubmood - "Destroy the template"- Funky, bassy, erm, running out of things
to say here! There is a melody trying to emerge as well.
Stu - "Audiosphere" - Lots of crackling at the start, followed with an
insaniac combination of low-res samples and zik sounds filtered through
them. Uniquely and distinctly Stu and no other! He remembered to fit a tune
in there as well. In terms of hybrid (chip/sample) tunes, he is at the top
of that game, with Marcer a close second place.
Upon dabbing the 'esc' key, there is a nice little tribute cameo to the
early Exceptions 'Little Colour Demo' as Mad Max gets to say "Wow!"when the
demo exits.
There is a characteristically wide range of styles and talents on show in
this latest collection. If I might be permitted a small note of criticism,
maybe the 'freaky' aspect was stressed a bit too much in some cases? Of
course this is down to my individual preferences, others may differ on that
view, of course.
The whole package was bound together with some impressive visuals from
Timbraland Exocet, the code ticked along with help from gwEm, Abyssand
Ultra.All of these are names which we hope to see more from in the future.
I managed to read part of the scrolltext on the main selection menu,
especially gwEm's funny piece about the current overblown nature of the YM
Rockerz team, compared with its humble origins. Almost like a parody of how
the mainstream music business itself evolved to a point of middle-aged
spread!
So at the end of this review, we're asking yet agoin, how are YM RockerZ
going to follow this one. (The "Back to the Present Day demo" as the final
part of a trilogy, perhaps?!)
Pro's..
A neat intro.
Great tunes, of course!
Some *really* killer tunes!
Graphically excellent, sort of like a mini 'Do Things' demo.
Con's..
Too long to wait since the last time. Over a year, hmmm?
Not such a great leap in the art of music demos as tYMewarp, but that one
would be hard to follow.
Fussy about (my?) hardware, intro worked but the mainpart refused to co-
operate for a while, then it suddenly decided to start working after all,
strange?
CiH,for Alive Mag,Jan '07.
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