In the Rain (inrain.xm)

Posted by TMA Placeholder Account on Tue 18th May 1999, rated 9 / 10.

This opens onto a rainstorm and a car chase, wonderful use of the effects, and the music starts up. Much of this goes into a heavy dance beat, easily grooveable, but it breaks too often to be a serious dance tune. Even so, musically, it's superb. A couple of long vocal samples round out the music nicely. The song keeps switching styles, from hardcore techno to trip-hop to symphonic techno, to almost folk... But somehow, the transitions work. One thing I thought was rather amusing is that the chord structure Morgan used is the same sequence used in countless "oldies" rock tunes, and it's neat to see it used in such a drastically different genre. Not a single mistake throughout the piece, here. Everything flows smoothly, the occasional sound effects fit in so well that you don't even notice them until you listen specifically for them, and the samples are immaculate. There are all sorts of subtleties inherent in this piece, from the echo panning of the beginning thunder-strikes to the on-and-off syncopation of the percussion beats that make this something wonderful for the technician and analyst, as well as the casual listener. It's clear to see that most of the samples have been clipped and optimized as much as possible to cut it down from even larger. Absolutely worth the download, even at its size of 2.45 MB.