Melcom's music reviewed

Bobic/BTTR

Dark Trooper Symphony 4

www.darkrhythms.com/dts4/

Since 1985 Andreas "Melcom" Urban has been successfully composing music for various computer systems. In the course of time he has been active for a couple of scene groups such as Hoax Arts and Classic. Meanwhile, he is also an established composer in the computer games industry. Well-known games such as "Turok 2", "Shadowman" and "South Park Rally" not only appeal to their players due to their interesting game-play, but especially thanks to the ingenious arrangement of sounds in the background which creates a particular atmosphere.

Around the middle of the year 1999 Melcom released his first audio CD. "Dark Trooper Symphony 4" contains 13 tunes, all of them in his own, distinctive style. The mostly pompous music that resembles movie soundtracks is combined with melodic, electronic parts and bombastic sequences from the industrial/ambient scene. It's a really intense and exciting experience of sound that sometimes reminds of Vangelis, yet without lacking the independence that is so crucial.

The first eight tunes on the "Dark Trooper Symphony 4" CD tell a complete science-fiction story. Thanks to excellent implementation in sound it's easy to follow the exciting story by the music. The musical climax is definitely reached by the seventh song, called "End Theme", whose tremendously beautiful and atmospheric melodies immediately snuggle up to the human hearing. Furthermore, the disc contains five bonus-tracks. Among them are two tunes from Melcom's current project "From Hell to Hell", the soundtrack of a real-time strategy game that is currently under development. Moreover, there is "Seeds of Evil", the remix of a song used in "Turok 2".

Jagged - Transformers

www.darkrhythms.com/jagged/

"Jagged - Transformers" is Andreas "Melcom" Urban's second audio CD, released in the year 2000. It's the soundtrack of the game with the same name that was published by the Japanese company Typhoon. Just like its predecessor "Dark Trooper Symphony 4", this CD has the typical Melcom style, which perfectly combines the type of music you know from movies with modern, electronic sound - and sounds yet a tad more expensive and sophisticated. The atmospheric soundtrack consists of ten tunes, this time mostly using harder industrial sounds, which the beautiful, bombastic main-parts are embedded in. Gloomy, fateful parts permanently alternate with bright, heavy and catchy melodies.

Once again the musical main course has been enriched with five additional courses - in other words: bonus-tracks. These songs perfectly fit the overall harmonic impression. "Loonie" and "The Dome" are special highlights. The first is a great trance-tune, which was also used as the background music of the cover CD of a well-known German games magazine and would even be a decent track for any disco. "The Dome" originally was the soundtrack of a scene-demo; it fascinates the listener with versatile samples and fantastic melodies who keep pushing him from one ecstasy to another. This song alone justifies the purchase of the whole album. Really a brilliant masterpiece.


Juergen Beck [Bobic/BTTR]
http://www.back2roots.org/

Translated by Adok/Hugi