Review: Innominate by Catspw of Sonic Fusion

Written by Makke

Facts

Innominate is a music-pack with 4 .IT modules made by Catspaw of Sonic Fusion. Downloaded from HORNET.

I've listened to the songs in both Impulse Tracker v2.14 and ModPlugg player.

Hm. Where shall I begin?

Let me first state that I've never listened to anything by Catspaw before, and I therefore don't know his usual standard of tunes. But I sure hope he works more on his other tunes than he has done on this music-disk.

All the songs on this disk have potential. Great one too! But it seems like Catspaw ether ran out of ideas on the songs, or was just plain lazy and didn't finish them. He didn't even give the songs proper names: 'E', 'J', 'K' and 'O'. Maybe there's some hidden message in this: hm... EJKO? No. Hmm: aha! If we put them is this order: J-O-K-E. Joke!

And what does that mean. Does Catspaw think the songs are jokes?

If he does I don't agree with him.

Let's take a look at the different tracks.

'J' (j.it)

This one starts out with a few strings and a hi-hat. Then the familiar 'drum & bass'-bass kicks in.

After that more hi-hat starts to play with a nice stereo effect. Then some sort of melody is reached. Sounds really good!

This is in my opinion the best track on the disk as this is the only one that actually sounds finished.

'O' (o.it)

Starts with a 303(?) loop (AH!!! A LOOP!!!) which pretty much stays in for the rest of the song. AJ AJ AJ!

This track never really bounces off and stays in the same 303 res. This could be a good 'waiting-for-the-next-level-to-load' tune in a game.

If you remember the loading song on the Amiga version of Desert Strike you get the idea of this track.

Fairly cool tune that you tap your feet a little to, but you really don't care about.

'K' (k.it)

Drum & bass track that starts out with a drum-loop played in a really weird way.

I know, I know. D&B tracks are supposed to be weird, but it sounds a little like Catspaw didn't really know what he was doing when he used this drum-loop. It sounds like... I don't know what it sounds like, but it ain't good.

This tracks ends rather quick too (it's just 1:30 minutes long). I hate to say this, but this track sucks! And the silly thing with it is that it doesn't have to!

'E' (e.it)

Starts with a drum-loop, then something that's probably made in ReBirth kicks in.

The chords come in really nicely, even though they are pretty predictable, but it sounds really nice.

Oh yes! This is a good song, but it feels abandoned! If it had only gotten a few more minutes to evolve this could have been a so cool song, but in the state it's in now it's only half finished!

To sum this up I can say that this disk could have been something special, but IT ISN'T FINISHED! The songs 'J' and 'E' are really cool, but could need some more work.

As it says in the info file to this disk (and this are as far as I know Catspaw's own words):

 'innominate

 4 songs 8 bits

 why 8 bit?  because the quality of these tunes
 is not worth making the download take longer
 by increasing the file size with 16 bit samples.
 i never notice a difference anyway.'

Why releasing something you're not happy with?

I haven't been able to contact Catspaw for some comments, but Catspaw if you read this please e-mail me if you like! (makke@scene-central.com)

Thanks for reading!

- Makke / Comic Pirates