everglan.xm (everglan.xm)

Posted by drq on Thu 16th May 2002, rated 6 / 10.

This song starts out with some sampled acoustic guitar strumming. A bass soon enters the mix, and it's very nicely tracked; I like how it does not always follow the rather monotone chords. When using only one sampled guitar chord like this, there's no doubt that you limit yourself harmonically; however this artist has managed to create some interesting dynamics using the bass and later an organ playing other chords on top. It works fairly nicely, although some more variation in the progression probably wouldn't hurt. This part of the song (it changes drastically later) has two main problems. First of all, the drumming. The percussion samples could have been better but that's not bothering me too much, it's what the bassdrum is doing that I just can't stand. It appears to be totally off beat in places, and just moving the notes in question one step up or down fixes this. Same goes for the bassline, but there it's not as obvious. When there's just bassline and guitar you hardly notice it, but once the heavier drumming kicks in it becomes quite annoying. The other big flaw here is the lack of melody - the chords and arrangement really call for a lead of some sort! I can think one up in my head while listening, but that's really the composer's job :) Around 1:45, the song changes direction entirely. The key goes from D major to D minor, and the instrumentation undergoes a similar metamorphosis, resulting in a darker mood. The acoustic strumming is gone, piano and strings play chords while a distorted guitar pumps hypnotically in the background. This atmosphere doesn't last long though, a fast and jumpy flute soon starts playing, bringing back the lighter feel of the first part. Drumming sounds okay here. The song then ends with a pretty cool chord progression, although I'd personally have preferred the final chord to be a minor one. This second part of the song might be more interesting musically than the first, but it doesn't sound as nice and smooth. Overall, this is a quite enjoyable piece of music, not overly original or innovative but nice to listen to. The first part has a lot of potential; with proper drumming, more variation and a lead on top it could be a real classic. Samples are of decent quality; some good ones, like the acoustic guitar, and a few that could be better, the piano for example. They work very well together. If you look at the technical side of the actual tracking there is not much to complain about, except for maybe the fact that the composer seems to have a tendancy to duplicate channels in order to make them louder, when the better solution probably is to lower the volume of the other samples. This results in a fairly loud song. Anyway, not much to complain about here. Effects are use sparsely used, but they're not really needed. Since the composer was kind enough to end his song before it got boring, I'll do the same with this review. :P