"In a market crowded with me-too jungle and hip-hop CDs, sound developer Ernest Cholakis has come up with something as original as it is useful: a whole CD of electronic drone tones. Drones? Sounds like a yawner. But this CD has an incredible amount of variety considering how little is going on. Ambient artists will be in hog heaven, and the drones should work well for those ominous breaks in industrial rock, too - or even in acid and drum 'n' bass. The sounds are less developed than those in David Torn's groundbreaking Tonal Textures CD, but that should make them more versatile.
"The 99 tracks last an average of 20 or 30 seconds each. The drones all have swirling overtones with luscious stereo animation. Some are tonal, with all of the overtones lined up sonorously above the fundamental. Others are ominous and discordant, with high buzzing overtones and thick clashes. But there's never anything abrupt: The fade-ins and -outs are always smooth, as is the animation.
"The 99 tracks last an average of 20 or 30 seconds each. The drones all have swirling overtones with luscious stereo animation. Some are tonal, with all of the overtones lined up sonorously above the fundamental. Others are ominous and discordant, with high buzzing overtones and thick clashes. But there's never anything abrupt: The fade-ins and -outs are always smooth, as is the animation.
"Some of them are evocative of Indian instruments such as sitar and tamboura," Ernie Rideout commented, "with luxurious synthesized string buzzes, open-fifths drones, and slow rhythmic strumming. Others have a wind orientation, resembling the overtone play of a didgeridoo or the vowel formant characteristics of chant." While a few of the drones are warm and rich, overall I'd have to say they sound distinctively digital, not analog. A bit cold and alien, even.
"Drone Archeology comes with a booklet so fat it doesn't fit into the jewel box. If I could give a soundware product an 11 for Documentation, this CD would win it! Most of the booklet is taken up with amplitude and frequency graphs for all of the drones, which may or may not be useful. The key ingredient is the table that tells you exactly where to set the loop start and end points to get an undetectable loop. With stereo files, looping is often a nearly insoluble problem, but this table makes it a piece of cake. I chose a couple of drones at random, loaded them directly from my Mac's CD drive into BIAS Peak, set the loop points, and sure enough, the loops were perfect. The booklet even gives a method that you can use to get close to the same results if you're sampling the drones via an analog connection.
"An inspiring collection," Ernie concluded. "I found myself unable to stop singing or playing along with the drones." Not the kind of CD most of us will use in every project, but when you need it, there's no substitute. Definitely worth having on the shelf."
- Jim Aikin, Keyboard, March 1999
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