Receptors - User Deluxe. 8bitpeoples 104

This week, 8bitpeoples brought us some new releases, the first one is a 6track EP by Receptors, which is a name I’ve seen before but I cant really put my finger on where so here is a little background check. He is from England, he makes music with gameboys and is behind the project 8bit-operators, -yep, that’s not in your head, the cliche warning bells are definitely ringing! Also, 8bit operators is something he refers to as the chipmusic vanguards (ouch) in their bio. Well they were the ones releasing the chipremix compilation of kraftwerk tunes on astralwerk. Say what you want about that compil, I thought it had a few very nice tracks and a lot of  junk. Something that is pretty amazing since kraftwerk music is so good that it should be more of a challenge to make a bad kraftwerk cover than a good one, so kudos to those who managed to do that! I don’t have the compil lying around anymore so I cant see if his track could be included in this rant. Anyway lets get on with the review of his new release!

This time, he has decided to replace an old toy with a new one, – I really hate musicians who refer to their instruments as toys but for the hell of it, ok!, apparently he only used Nintendo DS with a Korg MS-10 emulator this time. Well this sounds promising, Korg-10 is a great synth, but why use a Nintendo DS to emulate it instead of using the real deal beats me. So lets start of with the artwork. It is horrible. Ugly, ugly colors, and it has gameboys on it. My condolences to who ever thought this fake retro style was a good idea. And now, the music.

How does this emulated MS10 sound like? Well, have you ever tried out one of those guitar amps who claim to emulate old vintage amp sounds? Same thing. Add the cheap Nintendo DS sound and too much reverb to that and you will get the picture. But spite the bad sound, the first track, speed dialer, is really good. It has a nice theme and a fairly well arranged buildup. Too bad its not on a real MS10! Spite the good start, the second and third tracks are really bad. The purpose might have been good but the lack of proper sound just makes it annoying to listen to, especially with alot of stereo panning and re verbs all over the place. The compositions seems to have been made without a real idea behind them, like in random. But what do I know, I wasn’t there. I had to skip the fourth track to escape instant headache. But then came the big surprise in the fifth track called re_user revisited, it sounds like a remix of the first track with some really nice bas sound programing. If I would set scores on each track, this would be a 5! It is really smooth together with the first track. Nice work. Then follows the last track, which is called a remix of the first one, even though I would have called it a re-edit since its not that different so cant really do any comment on it.

So to the conclusion. Overall, this EP would have been very interesting if it was made on real hardware or at least with a good emulator instead of the NintendoDS MS10 program. I wouldn’t call it chipmusic since there is nothing from the definition chip in this, so the talk about being 8bit vanguard goes down the drain. Still, the first and fifth track really saves the release from going down the same drain to get the grade OK. And since its a webEP I can take out the tracks I like and flushing the rest. I will check out upcoming Receptors releases with some interest. And till the next time, try to have some cover art that actually have something in common with the music.

For dataairlines.net
M. Echant