Review: Banishment by Exiles

Written by Makke

Facts

BANISHMENT is a music-disk with music from Broam, Deezay, the greatFox, RS3, and Krest of EXILES. It contains 5 songs in .IT and .XM format. Downloaded from HORNET.

EXILES is a music-group from the US of A that I stumbled across one night on IRC. Well, maybe not the whole group but RS3 at least, and he asked me if I was Makke / The Einstein Crew, and as I was (at the time) I said yes. Then he started to talk about my music-disk 'NETWORK DREAMS'. I was quite stunned that anybody would download my music and actually remember my name. That was the first time anybody talked to me about my music, and since then me and RS3 have been friends (kind of :).

I didn't know who EXILES were, so I asked for an URL to download from, and this music-disk was what I got. Most of the trackers are as they say themselves 'relatively new in the scene'. Most of them have only tracked for two years or less. Hmm: I've only tracked for 'real' about ONE year (since I got my first PC). Anyway! Back to the disk and the different tracks!

'Nine (three-fourths complete)' by Broam (bro_9.xm)

Three-fourths complete? Well, I'd never release something that isn't finished (unless maybe a party version of something).

The track is a slow melodic song. Very soft and tender. And as the title say three-fourths complete, and I don't feel that this track is complete either. It never really starts. It builds up something good but ends as you think it's going to take of.

Broams comments:

Okay, Okay, Okay, I REALLY NEED to make a little note, correction, etc. The song is FINISHED. The "3/4 complete" is a pun (for those of you who don't speak english as your native language, you probably missed it.) The track was supposed to be in 3/4 time, but a calculation error put it in 9/8 time (or as RS3 jokingly comments, "27/32.") I kept the 3/4 complete in the title because of the time signature giving very incomplete feel to the song (and hence the pun.) The song is finished - albeit short (I did a lot of short tunes early on).

'Looking Back' by Deezay (dz-look.it)

This song starts off slowly and ballad-like that later get a little faster, but still very 'balladish'.

It's dominated mostly by piano and strings, but also a 'synthetic' saxophone. You know the kind?

The melodies are nice and the chords fit in well. It's all over an average track, but Deezay has potential that he shows in this track. With a little more training he would be able to make really good tracks!

And I mean REALLY good tracks. This one sounds a little MIDI however.

'If Life' by the greatFox (gfx_ifli.xm)

When I first looked at the file-size (3,18 Mb) of this tune I figured: 'Oh, no! He's used 20 loops to build this song!' But shame on me for judging to fast, it's not loops that make it so big. It's the LYRICS! I got a bit surprised. I didn't expect lyrics.

With an 'intro' built up by drums, tom-toms and hi-hats it bounces of into a pretty cool song in the best synth style. The chorus really got stock on my brain for a few days, and I still can't help singing along: 'If life just gets to hard, don't let it get to you' dum-di-dum-da-do :-)

'Essence of Life' by RS3 (rs-life.it)

Wow! He's not only a nice guy, he can TRACK too! :-)

'Essence of Life' starts of with the sound of birds singing and water flowing, and gently the chord is faded in and the chorus melody starts to play. Then an 80:s synth-pop like bass-line kicks in together with the drums.

The first thing that hit me was 'Never Ending Story' by Limahl. Not that this song is anything like Never Ending Story: This is in my opinion the best track on the disk. Sounds very good and original.

RS3's comments:

No problems here, really...
...and thank you ;) hehe

'Gone' by Krest (k_gone.xm)

Sad piano-track that makes you see a movie-scene were someone walks threw the rain away from his girlfriends house (who just broke up with him - not the house, but the girlfriend).

Pretty good track, but it could use a little volume adjustments and final-mixing. The piano often gets a little too loud. And the bass sample loops really ill. You don't hear that while the piano is there but when the piano stops and the bass is alone it sounds rather bad. So yet another average track on the disk!

To sum this up I would like to say that this group has potential. With a bit training this could be a group to look out for.

But this music-disk is just the beginning of their scene careers, and I probably will look out for their next disk and see if there's any progress.

- Makke / Comic Pirates

Thanks to EXILES for the comments and I apologize for the 'misunderstanding' with the title. (I had written BANISHED instead of BANISHMENT!) I felt really embarrassed :)