by

Ben Ranger Rick
(Ranger Rick)

This tune was just plain out of time, going 2m33s beyond the 4 minute recommended limit. Makes extensive use of samples from Pop Will Eat Itself _Cure For Sanity_ and Meat Beat Manifesto _Subliminal Sandwich_ (don't think I'd miss such things! :) among other CDs. But, samples are well controlled and fitted. Without many changes, song becomes dull not too far in.

Damn. DAMN damn. DAMN!!! I don't know how to say this nicely: this song is the balls. It rocks. It kicks. It swings. I don't mean to sound lame, but I can't help myself. :) Everything just falls right together. The bass is SOO cool, so low you feel it, and the licks are incredible... And it just -slides- right into the rhythm, which is inspired, to say the least. (It's a bit overused, but the trance is worth it!) The lead is repetative, too, but it's dreamy and fits right into place (if I overuse that phrase, forgive me, but it's the best way to say it, here) with the mood of the song. And you cure the monotonality of the song by the ending, which is a new theme, but... fits right into place. It's like this whole thing were just orchestrated off-line and plugged into place in a tracker. Seamless. There are flaws, especially where the contest is concerned... You're one of those trackers whose strength is as much in your choice and use of samples as in tracking ability... It's your tallent with using--no, mixing--samples in a tracker that makes the music so wonderful. The problem with that is that there's minimal "fancy footwork" in the song, that wins contests. A damn shame... Still, what matters more than writing another WAVE-like tune is the -listenability-, and this song drips with it. I could leave this looping for the rest of the day and not grow bored of it (I love those vocal samples--I can't understand a word of it, which means they're perfectly used)... This is FSOL-quality stuff. It's the Orb. It's totally professional, this song. I love it. Burn this to CD and make millions. I wish I knew who you were, so I didn't make a fool out of myself by saying this, but here 'goes: go to www.dhv.org and do two things: first, download everything written by JHaze. His music is similar to yours. Second, click the "join" button. We're trying to go professional, and we need more music like this. :) Of course, if I'm saying this to someone from Mono or FM or something, I'll sound like a total jerk. But I'll take that risk. This song is -most- awesome. (This is the highest rating I've given in about 25 songs... It'll probably be the highest I give, period.) Thanks.

Cool drum loop at the beginning, nice slow build up. But, the song feels like it's getting nowhere, it is the same over and over. The choice of the samples are an interesting blend, it could've been a lot better with just bits and pieces here. The mix could've use more punch, everything's flat, nothing stands out.

hmmm nice laid back tune, I like that you're not afraid of the 4 minute limit and just take your time to finish the tune the way you want to. Obviously the quality of the samples had to take a backseat this time to fit the track within the 1mb limit, but I think you've done a good job despite that. Must admit I don't have much to offer here. Nice groove in this one and it's slowly growing on me :)

You appear to have gone way overboard on the extended samples. I can't imagine it would have been that difficult to recreate that same bassline with a few individual bass sabples, rather than a loop. This is bad practice for a veteran. The song doesn't have much of a "hook" - it really didn't grab me at all.