T.S. [Extended Ver.] (ke-tough.xm)

Posted by arcturus on Sat 19th Jun 2004, rated 9 / 10.

When I look at the huge backlog of mediocre songs I have waiting for me in the "K" directory, it's songs like this that make it worthwhile. This is songs is 5:46 in length the the file size is a whopping 4.570 megabytes. The tune is experimental, as described by the author, and it's really very interesting - a lot better to listen to than the generic dance techno that people like for some reason. There's a warbling guitar that plays the lead throughout most of the song. It wastes no time with the introduction and gets right into the meat of the song. The chord progression is quite good. I particularly liked the patterns towards the end, when the song was coming to a climax. Just an overall great sound. I found a few sloppy things related to the samples. Modplug indicated that there is one sample referenced by an instrument that is never played. Several samples also have data after the loopback point. Cutting those and removing the sample saved about 400K on the file size. The samples are very high-quality sounding 16 bit samples. The lead guitar takes up the bulk of the sample space, but it sounds pretty good. I think the author went a little overboard with the tone portamentos on it, however. It doesn't hurt to play a sample from the start every now and then. Good job of panning, good use of effects. A very professional technical job.