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                     "ULTIMATE MUSIC DEMO 873o" by THE P.H.F.
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system... ST, STe, Falcon (in parts), RGB/VGA, harddisk recommended!

size..... 6,8 MB or 1o disx

credits.. code - grazey/phf
               - calsoft/phf
               - defjam/checkpoint
          hack - grazey/phf
               - mr stycks/phf
          grfx - sts
               - havoc/fun
               - grazey/phf
          musx - tao/cream

release.. 1o/2k2

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After all, here it comes, in development for about 4 years  now... the UMD 873o,
maybe the biggest music demo the -complete- demo scene has seen so far, bringing
far over 46oo chip (!) music tunes from Atari chip musicians to your ears...

Not only the  number of musix is  impressive, no, also the size, with 6,8 MB and
stored on 1o disx (for diskbased systems), it breaks any limits that were set so
far making users of diskbased systems to little popeyes because of the many many
disk changes. And also  the intro of this  music demo is another record breaker,
featuring with over 2o minutes the longest chip music ever done and so the intro
lasts about 2o minutes as well, yawn!

But hey! Stop the hype  here! Let's take  a closer look  and see if this demo is
really that breaking...

The intro is separated from  the demo and you can run both things as stand alone
programs as  well. After  starting  the intro  at first  a "In the beginning" in
white letters appears on the black screen, accompanied with chippy noises but it
doesn't lasts long untill the screen is building up.
Below of  the screen you can see a timetable, reaching from 198o over 199o up to
today. This  timetable  features a lot  of little  images, representing  special
events in history, just  as the discovering of the AIDS virus, the launch of the
Hubble telescope, the black friday  on the Dow Jones  index and such stuff. Over
the timeline a little pointer is  placed, starting in the middle eighties, where
the history of the ST starts as well.

Left over this timeline a  lighsourced 3D PHF  logo is turning  around, changing
its  letters  with  every turn, P - H - F -... On  the right  upper  side of the
screen you can see a  little window  that has a UMD logo  on top and  below this
window a textdisplayer starts to print some story onto the screen.

The music starts to go  melodic, it's done by TAO  btw, and on the  left side of
the screen the names of Atari chip musicians starting to fall  down and the text
displayer starts to tell us the story of chip musix on the ST, yeah! You can see
the pointer moving on the timeline and after the little screen stood black for a
while, a starfield starts  to turn around while the music changes into some more
known melody...

The journey  starts  as a  game  sequence of  GOLDRUNNER appeared  in the little
window, showing the GOLDRUNNER spacefighter  flying over  the landscape, and the
music! Damn, it's  a GOLDRUNNER remix! What have  I played  this game  and so it
goes on, we're reaching GOLDRUNNER 2, the music always changes into the precious
soundtrack in TAO remix style and more memories are waking up.



Yeah! Goldrunner!

We're  reaching  the BITMAP BROTHERS' area, featuring  XENON, animations  of the
game MAGIC POCKETS, "Marc Coleman - Degas Elite sucks!" :) and  in the end we're
reaching the launch of the demo scene!

Those times are starting with the "UNION DEMO", what else, seeing Charly running
around in  the UNION  mainmenu, followed  by the next  big step, the  LOST BOYS'
"MIND BOMB" demo represented with a disting TBL logo, and again  followed by THE
demo of the early  nineties, "OOH CRICKEY WHAT A SCORCHER"... yeah! Here you can
see SPAZ' marvellous pixels in texture mapped roll downs.

The next step in  Atari chip musix evolution  is  reached with  the "PUNISH YOUR
MACHINE" demo by the DELTA FORCE and  their waybreaking  musician BIG ALEC, that
is  followed  by CHAOS INC's  projects "RINGS OF MEDUSA" and "NEOCHROME MASTER",
allways  presented with little  pictures to find  its way to "LETHAL XCESS", the
ultimate shot'em'up on the ST.

But the evolution of ST chip musix made bigger  and bigger steps, represented by
the unforgettable "DBA MAG # 6" intro  by SYNERGY and their outstanding musician
SCAVENGER who invented the SID tunes on  the ST, it is  followed by  a screen of
the "BIRD MAD GIRL SHOW" by  the  FRAGGLES, featuring  a  screen  with  vertical
rasters.

And we  go on, stepping  over another  dutch god, ISO of SENTRY, using the musix
driver XLR8 done by  his group mate, that brought another different sound to our
scene. And  since music  wasn't only  done in  UK, Germany and Holland, also the
frenchies  are getting their part  now, showing  us that JESS of the OVERLANDERS
has left very impressed people.

Some part that prints different group logos onto the little  screen comes up and
is followed then  by the "new school" era, starting with  a marvellous guestpart
of DEFJAM, who stuffed  parts of  his "SURETRIP" demo into  the little box, such
as sunblobs, floor/wall  mappers and  delay rotation  zoomer, very impressive as
all of his routines. The other "new schoolers" are  represented by DHS' "SWEETY"
and MYSTIC BYTES' "BREATH", both coming  in with effects, a  textured tunnel for
the first and a wormhole for the second.

Yes and so we reached the end of the intro... after about 2o minutes of thinking
back to all  those times  since they're  representing softwares  I got in my own
hands, I had running on my old ST  and that  impressed me  that much and where I
have bound a lot of my memories on. What a great idea  and creation! TAO's great
medley brings back a lot of  the old sounds in new buzzing style and with GRAZEY
and the other helpers he's  building alone with this  intro and this outstanding
piece of music a monument for the ST chip musicians...

Still impressed by the intro I started the demo itself, finding myself back on a
nice drawn menu  screen, featuring  obviously the STS pixel touch and some rasta
fari style too... gimme the joint ma'an! On the left side you can see two boxes,
one featuring the names of the composers  and if you  click onto a name with the
mouse, his tracklist is popping up below in the other box, while  some VU meters
starting to  jump around to the music in a box right of the screen. Last but not
least  in parts  pictures of  the makers  and their  real names  and country are
presented there.



Gimme da beats, ma'an!

And the music list is damn impressive. I didn't counted all  the musicians and I
have to say that I didn't listened to every tune, since  this would take ages, I
just scrolled down the composer menu to search for musicians that I know more or
less personally or for musicians  I liked especially. And so you can find tracks
by  AJT of Hemoroids, Antichrist & Jedi of  Sector One, NoMore/Lewd/Vivid/... of
Animal Mine & Vectronix,  Jess and Doclands of OVR,  Iso of Sentry, Scavenger of
Synergy and so on... Just all (?) musicians that ever stepped into the public on
the ST chip musix scene. I also discovered my old group mates from .tnb. such as
GARY (here I miss his tunes for the UCM # 1 and UCM # 5 intros) and  CONNOR (who
surely isn't from  Austria, as well as GARY too ;), mOdmates fun projects and so
on... Yawn!

Unfortunately I found even a few more sounds that weren't included in this demo,
so the soundtrack of the "PHANTOM" demo by ARKHAM ST hat wasn't included as well
and  I  think there  will come  up more and  more... So I wonder if it would  be
possible to update the demo in some way?

But anyway, GRAZEY did a good  job and ripping over 46oo chip tunes is some life
work, I remember  me ripping chip sounds in  the past too but I was bored by the
sometimes  difficult way  to get them  and to sort  them as I just reached a few
1oo tunes... Ok... what about the final words?

Final words... GRAZEY did  it, after a long  development  time he  matched it to
               bring us the  biggest chip music demo so far  and surely forever.
               The intro idea and creation is really  outstanding as well as the
               efforts to create this demo at all. It blasts  away any frontiers
               and after  all GRAZEY has built a  real monument for  the ST Chip
               musix scene with it, remembering  to some gods, pioneers and very
               outstanding composers. Without any doubt UMD belongs to the high-
               lights of ST demos overall.

___ratings______________________________________________________________________

visuals.......  75 % - nice drawn grafix in intro and menu...
audio......... 1oo % - A flood of chip musix!
effects.......  7o % - Some of the efx in the window are really cute!
design........  5o % - oldschool, demo-window, nice colours in the menu
originality...  8o % - a chip music demo... but a stunning one! Intro idea!

___Overall______75_%____________________________________________________________

Since UMD 873o has ruled GRAZEY's life over the past 4 years  I wonder what will
come next from the P.H.F. since now he has free time en masse!

_.tSCc.__________________________________________________________moondog_1o/2k2_