orpheus (orpheus.mod)

Overall Impression (10/10)

It's not often I go on here and review mods, in-fact, this is my first time ever doing it!
As I look at this page now, and considering how long this file has been up on here, I almost feel like it's criminal No one has reviewed it yet.
This tune holds a lot of childhood memories for me.
Picture me, 7 year old boy in 1992. A privileged boy with an Amiga500 and my pop occasionally buying Amiga magazines from the newsagents. So CUAmiga 1992 April 1992 lands in the house. Me curious to check out all the disks [maybe it was the funny little chipmunk on the coverdisk that made me pick it up in the first place! haha), I'm already impressed by the Fossilized mod (was this also another Ronan Pearce banger? I will need to check the mag again!) with the Giant skulls picture and later on the pic-of-the-month fish thing. I remember not being patient enough for Orpheus to load and assumed it was faulty all the time. Eventually I think my father pointed out that if you ACTUALLY read the text on screen (haha)-it takes a while to unload and unpack. Big File size for its time. Once it loaded I was both amazed and scared. The bombastic intro always made me jump even on 2nd and beyond listens. It got me hooked instantly and the cries of what sound like dinosaurs gave me all sorts of cool imagery in my head! It then breaks down into a hiphop style beat and all of a sudden - "GO!" we're off, into what can only be described as Euro-dance Vs ELO. - but in a good way don't get me twisted! It also slightly gives me Tubular bells vibes too, but tubular bells for a 90's generration!

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (10/10)

On opening the file one might think, hmmmm. so it's the default 125BPM that protracker gives you, will this be any good. Well yes, because Ronan Pearce shows his understanding of tempo commands throughout the piece, particularly the ending.
Crisp sample pickings from the ST-xx archives, all sample slots used to and put to great use. I real understanding of creating fake delays with simple C commands. It's not mind blowing commands but it doesn't have to be - it just has to be the essential commands to work and give you that vibe you want

Development (10/10)

No arrangement and mix issues at all, the whole things sounds really phat on a loud system!
Arrangement is nice with the obvious challenge of the 4 channel limit. Roman has done clever structure tricking of dubbing things in and out to trick you thinking there's more than 4 channels. This is also say - 4 or 5 years before the mod2smp app where you could blend channels together and save it out as a .iff.

Creativity (10/10)

again, 10 out of 10 what more can I say? The melody's all work. While there's sections where it's only like a 3 or 4 chord sequence of major and minor, it's the melodies and basslines on top that really vibe. There's obvious western structures like verses and chorus but it's instrumental obviously, the main hook (or chorus) isn't that far off from something you'd hear 2Umlimited do, yes, a product of its time but it worked then and still works now (at least for me!)
There's sections where the chords change yet the bass stays on the same note which is such a cool simple trick and adds a total different vibe.
The ending is really nice with the return of the distorted guitar sound, the staccato strings slowing down and endling with those blast-out effects you hear on the intro.

Enjoyment (10/10)

I play this module at least once every year as a nostalgia trip to when I was 7. It's up there with the likes of Tip & Firefox - Enigma but sadly technically isn't because of ignorance!
It's an un-sung hero! and thank goodness CU Amiga picked it up to put on their demo disk!

Additional Comment

Nothing to say other than I hope Roman Pearce reads my review and is still working on music regardless of hardware/software used! Reach out to me brother!! If it wasn't for you I wouldn't be into the whole music thing let alone Amiga music!
I'm so happy now this mod gets the review it deserves 30+ years later!