mathew's profile

A high point for Synergy, November 5, 2009

If I could only keep one Synergy album, it would be this one. It has enough experimental flavor to be interesting; I particularly like "On Presuming To Be Modern III". Parts of it can be a bit new-agey and forgettable, but this and "Games" probably belong in the collection of any electronic music fan.

Too much DX7, November 5, 2009

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I hate the sound of the Yamaha DX-7. Unfortunately, Larry Fast apparently got a DX-7 circa 1983, and used it all over this album. So while I would wholeheartedly recommend his timeless earlier work, to my ear this album hasn't aged well at all--it sounds like Miami Vice soundtrack outtakes.

Of course, if you like DX sounds and mid-80s flavor synth drums, you might love this album. It's an aesthetic judgement, and your mileage may vary.

Complements, rather than replaces, Photoshop Elements, October 2, 2009

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

For some years now, Adobe has had a monopoly in the market for digital image manipulation software on the Mac, in the shape of Photoshop. This has made them lazy; when Apple started shipping Intel Macs, it was two years before Adobe bothered with an Intel version of Photoshop Elements. They only started porting Photoshop to be a native Cocoa application in 2008, so it's still not 64 bit.

Happily, in 2007 Pixelmator was released, promising to give Adobe some competition. Unlike Photoshop, it has been built from the ground up to use Mac OS X technologies, and hence offers a full range of Core Image and Quartz Composer filters and generators. OS X technologies are visible even in… Read more