Midnight Transmissions

Four new files turned up in C:\LOSTBLD\MUSIC since the last issue, and they keep late hours. Press F7 for MUSIC and you will find them at the end of the SOUNDTRACK group, after Alien Payback. Eleven tracks now, all original General MIDI compositions written for the archive.

Four transmissions

*Black Rotor* is the one with the turbines already turning. A driving synth-bass pulse, a soaring sawtooth lead and brass answering it, at 142 beats a minute in E minor. Midway the drums drop out and leave bells and strings hanging in the air, then the theme comes back over a changed bass line and lands in E major. It is the sound of an aircraft that does not officially exist, taking off at dawn. Put it on before a sortie in BLACK VECTOR.
*Star Chart 09* is hopeful in a way the archive rarely is. A flute carries the tune in a lilting six-eight, with French horn, clarinet and celesta around it and soft timpani where a drum kit would be. It drifts from C major into E-flat and back, like a ship plotting its way home past planets with numbers instead of names.
*Neon Pursuit* is two in the morning in a city that never turns its signs off. Electric piano, an overdriven guitar answering a saw lead, gated snare and handclaps, in A minor at a steady 110. It has a chase in it, and then, in the bridge, a lonelier stretch in another key, down to strings, guitar and a rimshot. Good company for UNDERCOVER.
*Parallel Static* is the strangest of the four. A three-note vibraphone figure runs in sixteenths and slips against the beat, because three does not divide into sixteen. Congas and a choir pad move underneath, and in the middle the key turns bright and Lydian, as if the radio had tuned into a slightly different version of the world.

Four transmissions. No call sign. Please do not ask the PC speaker to play the choir.

Same notes, five cards

The [ DEVICE ] panel still offers the five sound devices from last issue, from GM WAVETABLE down to a one-bit PC SPEAKER. Try Black Rotor on GM WAVETABLE, then on FM SYNTH, where the same notes come out of two-operator FM patches instead of samples. Then try Star Chart 09 on CHIP SYNTH, and hear a space opera become a cartridge.

This issue has a theme of its own as well, separate from the four above. It is called Vector Burn, and it lives under ISSUE THEMES as ISSUE003.MID. The cover and the contents page have a button for it.