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Saxonia Issue 02 Part 032
Impressions -
The debut album of Factor6 Reviewed
by Zito/1oo%^mOOdS^[S]carab
[l
With happiness I got a CD-parcel from my old czech friend
Factor6 in the Amigascene, who is sadly a quite more known
musician inside the ZX Spectrum and C64 scene but knows to
ge the best out of 4channels with Protracker or XM though.
Anyway... As I always really liked to hear and use his
musics (find them in JP9, JP11 and Showtime 16 for example)
I directly listened to the huge archive of ZX tracks I found
on the archive and while browsing through the rest of the CD
content I discovered a directory named "mp3" and when I
entered it, I was faced by a cover and 13 trackes those were
streamed from Factor6' first audio CD.
Wow! He never told me about this! I directly lunched my
mp3 player and started to listen. And while I do, I know I
have to report about this quite good record compared to a
lot of other scene musician releases of the last time. And
so I do here now...
[1 $01.[0 [2 "Remind The Atmosphere"[0 - Well, in my opinion a really
bad track to start with. Until the sounds really start you
have to listen to the same tone of a string that gets on
your nerves pretty fast. It gets interesting after another
string-only-break, but since the songs ended after 8 minutes
playing, I will never forget the strings and the strange
atmosphere it created inside my head. I would not have
started with this track. Sorry for the honesty, friend!
[1 $02.[0 Again something string oriented, but this time the
strings are not as dominating as in the first track.
[2 "Aspects of being"[0 features nice piano loops and a mixture
of industiral beats and a simple melody that reminds on old
Speccy games, not only because of the intrument. 5,5
minutes are also not too long as this tune is splitted into
three similar interesting parts, those return to were they
came from at the end.
[1 $03.[0 [2 "Inphormation"[0 - An interesting wordplay with the
name, Factor6 did. It features ununderstandable, but
"fitting to the atmosphere of the song" czech male voice
samples spoken to an annoying beat. For sure a good tune
for fans of this kind of music, but I do not like it that
hard. The funky piano loops and synth effects in the middle
that again suit my ears quite well although they are played
too long (about 7 minutes) at the end.
[1 $04.[0 Seems to me some piece of a rave-like tune. A remix
of omicrons [2 "The Bushmen"[0 featuring one voice sample again
and interesting sound mixing. Clear hihats, cool bass and
driving beats. Nothing more to say, listen...
[1 $05.[0 This track sounds a bit like modern dadaism to me.
Factor 6 builts a minimalistic tune around two samples of
people talking about "Do you Like Parties?". Here rave
samples are played with breaks to some classical game
bassline. The sound changes at all not that much, just some
minal diffences can be noticed at the end compared to the
beginnging. But this does not make this tune uninteresting.
In the last part starts a disturbing sound in the rhythm
that destroyes the song and let it end this way. Nice idea.
[1 $06.[0 [2 "Full Grip"[0 A simple techno drumset and cheap
electronic instrument start to play and get featured by some
more strange sounds (which are tape loading noises from zx
spetrum as written on the cover) and a low noise string.
But than nothing changes and I got bored a bit.
[1 $07.[0 [2 "Went"[0 , a groove trax remix, continues the sound of
the previous track a diffent way. Here you can hear more
happy drums following in speed a giving rave/house sample.
Both are followed by a simple melody leading in all parts of
the song structure as the background music does not change
from this strange sounding arrangements. That does not
really sound groovy enought to fullfill what the name
promised. It ends in small crash and directly...
[1 $08.[0 ...the next song named [2 "Lower State (FT2 mix)"[0 , which
is a remix of an amiga tracked song Factor6 release under
Liquid Skies when this groups was in the starting position.
This remix sounds more polite and commercial than the
original one, but is - in my eyes - a great diversion from
the two songs I listend to before. The beats are nicely
arranged and underline the idea from the original mix with
some new piano loops.
[1 $09.[0 Game song deluxe? What is that? I wondered when
[2 "Chronos Theme"[0 gets played. Sweet bells and a funky
bassdum and percussion following the seemingly crazy jumping
game character. A Tim Folin Remix, well done.
[1 $0A.[0 And again something totally different to the first 7
tracks. A calm and slow piece of a diskmagstyle tune named
[2 "Diskmagination".[0 Beatiful strings and bells playing a
melody underlined by smooth and silent drums. With a break
and some soli melody, this tune does not get boring for me.
I could listen to it twice, three times, four times...
Great. I wish I had have it as a starttune for JP before!
:-) At the end it fades out the traditional way and...
[1 $0B.[0 ... the next tunes comes up. [2 "Juicy Life"[0 sounds
like a typical demotune. Melody, intruments, drums and
speed let me feel like watching a megademo. Only the
quality samples and the - a bit different from standard demo
tunes - second melody that is laid above the first and
played a bit too loud, let me know that it is something done
by a descendant of these computer scene times. After 2
minutes and 30 seconds comes a lovely and romatic break that
leads smoothly dramtically into the second part, which is a
bit more wild than the first one. The finale comes as in
the old demos but is a slighty new interpretation. I simply
love it!
[1 $0C.[0 [2 "Skylines"[0 , a piano piece. Really nice and lovely
music arrangement featuring strings and a sample sounding
like an oboe. Sadly it lasts for only 1 minute and 50.
[1 $0D.[0 is the bonus track named [2 "Outro"[0 that makes use of the
Amiga narrator device telling the greetings. It features
nice chipsamples and low filtered drums, rounds this
different in content CD up.
So what? From totally string dominated atmosphere to
annoying hard raves to strange minimalstics to happy game
sounds to calm diskmag tunes to a special way of greetings,
this CD features everything Factor6 is capable of. The only
thing I missed was his disco and funk way of tracking. But
the rest is really good music done in 2001. I hold my
fingers crossed for the musical career or this boy!
[2 Supplement: The whole album by Factor6 has been re-released
for the net under mOOdS meanwhile. Go and leech it at
www.chscene.ch/moods/f6 and enjoy.
[0
READY.
