Dance 5

As with all eJay products, the design is sleek but simple. A central control panel allows you to sample with an easy Drag and Drop; many of the 5000 trax encoded on disk. These riffs and vamps are premastered so as to happily synchronise with each other. An FX Studio positively encourages the user to thereafter modify and warp those samples (you can even alter the pitch and signature with the new Time and Tune facility); likewise, the Bass and Chord Generators permit you to add some beef to the musical baguette, while the Polyphonic and Groove Generators act as sequencers and synthesisers, allowing you to turn the most humdrum of borrowed trax into something intensely personal. And then you can export your tunes using the Web link-up--or indeed compare them with other efforts on the prelinked eJay Online Sound Archive.

And when all that gets a tad boring, well then you can use the CD Grabber to rip some other sounds, or get creative with the 48 Track Arranger, or take on board the 3-D VJ Box to work up some psychedelic accompanying visuals. --Sean Thomas