WinTang's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[dj_padman - Pull Itsa]

Oi friend

Always good fun to swing by your page and see what you're experimenting on. This site needs more artists that focus more on expanding than receiving downloads.

I had problems with this though, main thing is that it gets on my nerves :) I'm trying to put my finger on it while listening to it, so bear with me.

A word that comes to mind is 'mushy'. The whole thing is basically submerged in pads - of course you have a name to live up to - and they seem heavily reverbed, too. I'm afraid it drowns out a lot of dynamic nuances. Couple of times I went "Hey! I think I just missed something cool!", there's glitches and weird synths and a really cool beat, but they don't seem to stand out as much as they usually do in your music. On the whole, it lacks a direction and soon I feel the whole pad-thing is beginning to sound gratuitous and even bordering on corny New Age (which is something I highly suspect you weren't going for).

Listened through the thing a couple of times now, there's definitely some good ideas in there. It just doesn't really feel organic, too randomly thrown together, and relying too much on heavy sustain.

I really admire your productivity though, by the way. You pump out full-length songs at a frightful rate and I may not always like them, but they are always at least decent and show a lot of effort.

A 5/5 for that effort, and encouragement to dig deeper into this stuff, and a request to pardon the possibly harsh tone of the review. Maybe this was just not written for me :)

dj-padman1 responds:

Very valid points. I agree.

I was going for a frantic feel with the percussion so it did get overloaded. The pads as well? aww man, I should be getting those right!
I had the same feel listening back to it. I'll try and get the next one sounding a bit 'leaner'.

Well, input is always welcome, and yours carries the weight of a skilled practitioner of the art, so I thank you! ;)

[-=LJC=- Laudanum is delicious]

Whee

A hint of Bartok's math-music logic :)

This wins mainly because it's so transparent, even when it gets "warped up" one can still follow the individual parts.

I like how the left-hand seems borrowed from bebop, and to the extent of that it might be interesting to give it a triplet-based swing feel, just a thought.
And maybe a bit more of the retriggering on the melody that you used at the very beginning?

I've always been a sucker for reverse stuff, you used it very delicately too, especially in the way it blends with the (I assume it's a) cello.

Very original, very exciting, very cool! 5/5

LJCoffee responds:

Thank you WinTang!

I wasn't really sure where this was going while I was working on it - I have a non-warped version - but it felt a little too repetitive and it had such a low density that it just felt a little too flimsy ya know? Then I was thinking that perhaps this would make a nice intro to something much more typically eloctronic - but again, unless the final had a running time of about 10 minutes or more then this would be a little too long for an intro and to be honest I was much too lazy to really flesh out something that long.

I took the shortcut of manually "randomizing" the velocity data to try to make it sound a little less perfect in an attempt to get a more human feel - I was afraid that almost I over did it though. Maybe I did :D

Either way, it was fun to work on and I'm always glad to get comments from the regulars!

Thanks again!

[|JZ|- Space Journey]

Well.

Comments? Really boring, actually. That's because you "cooked it up in a little bit". Syntrus be damned, I fully agree with Solus.

Instead of thinking "I may finish this", try "I may actually start this". So far you have 2 slightly different measures, with absolutely no thought put into bass and drums, and a wee bit into synthwork.

If you have something that you actually worked on and given detailed attention to, point me there please.

[Khuskan - Again]

Nice one

Wonderful guitar tone! Effectively simple lick too. When the piano and strings came in, I was worried you'd be going all Robert Miles on me, but the sine lead made me remember which artist I was listening to. On re-listen, the cowbell

A good hint at profound lyrics, I think I was able to make out about 60% of them. Misleading title, m i rite?

The whole rhythm section is a bit dry - probably on purpose, contrast and everything :), but I'd say it's clashing a bit TOO much. The kick is eaten by the bass somewhat, and the snare sounds quite bland. I do very much appreciate the funk element, however.

The whole thing has an understated quality to it, sort of like what Air sometimes succeeds in. Modest, honest, sympathy-generating.

So to sum up, mol-dur effect in vocoder = instant win.

Khuskan responds:

The last word in the lyrics is 'again', but I wanted to use them more as an instrument, less as a poem.

As for the rhythm, I guess they're just a personal preference of mine. The bass is a little overpowering but I'm prepared to blame that on the less-than-cd quality I had to encode it to to fit it on newgrounds.

Yeah, that snare pissed me off to a point I just found something that was good enough and left it, but I'm getting more and more eager to get my tracks finished ;-)

[Tetris on Crack]

Tsss

This was great and one of the best organized pieces of junk I've ever heard :) the whole glitching and skipping and lagging was really intricately done. One thing I think was a bad choice is the filter on the lead, it made it foggy where the rest is so spot on sharp. Yeah.
Fived though. I wish more people were this impudent when remixing Video Game music!

[Distortzion - Gimme a Break]

Fun :)

Got nice and meh bits in this, as an experiment I'd say it's delivered at least 20 interesting breaks and glitches.

To have them work as such they should be handled a little bit more carefully though :)

The way I see it, with breaks and mainly glitches, the listener has to be able to keep feeling the rhythm and beat at all times, though sometimes just barely.
So if you're going to make a big chain of glitch, cut it at the right place to re-acknowledge the beat, or have a hi-hat or something keep up the beat during the glitching.

Enjoyed it!

Distortzion responds:

Yes, maybe, really maybe I'm going to add synths an stuff but for now...

[DSZ - [CT] Church]

Hmm

This sounds a bit too linear to assume you played it yourself... I can't really rate this because if you just assigned a piano vst to a MIDI, I think it's crap, but if it's an arrangement you made yourself, or I'm a moron and you did play it, or even both, you may consider this 10'd and 5'd.

Distortzion responds:

Too be honest, yes I used a midi but I had to improve so om it.

And what did you mean with "linear"?

[Distortzion - HyperXtremeTime]

Planetary.

Whoooo

Thankfully, you realized that the chaos of all the arpeggios is quite heavy on the ears, so you gave us a few kinda relieving parts as well, hehe.

I think it's very nice, I can't really tell in how much you actually aimed for bitonality but it has some Stravinsky elements! :P

I imagine this has been pretty hard to mix and as such I think some of the levels are not really in line but I can't be bothered to come up with names to describe all the different synths, so you'll have to figure out which ones I mean yourself. :)

Here's a 5.
(now stop fucking bugging me)
(<3)

Distortzion responds:

Planetary lol

Thnx for the rev.

[There will be blood!]

Hey neighbour!

'bout time I swung by your page again, especially since I've been listening to Napalm Death and Dillinger Escape Plan more extensively lately! While pumping out sissy Classical songs at the same time! Am I \m/ or not?

Guitaring is great. You invented some good, original and HEAVY riffs and like a professional metal writer added variations for every second bar. Not to mention you can really pull it off technically, but in fact I already knew you were one of the best guitarists on NG.

Drums seem somewhat undermixed maybe, double kicks don't go tick-tick-tick usually, hehe :P

Favorite parts include the first half-time part and any tremolo picked bit.

I'm gonna do some kind of thrash/grind tune in the near future and have Gorebastard fuck it up entirely with his shit voice. You'll be among my inspirators, definitely.

In short, ROFL WOOT NICE 1!!

Thansk 4 ur vote TinWang, you voted 13.37 for "There will be blood OMG!", keeeping itts socre at 6.66!!

[Saga-Rough Mix-Metaljonus]

ARgh

God damn it you're good.

Wow man, seriously, I officially stopped appreciating this epic metal crap some years ago, but you brought my lost love back for a couple of minutes! Hahaha!

The first part is very crafty, fabulous licks, kickass uneven rhythms, great varying of hooks and dimness. You're an actual virtuoso man, everything is spotless.

But when the half-time enters and you do that Egyptian style solo, it actually gets soul. That was a the definite highlight of the song for me.

I'd say the whole coda is a bit superfluous, simply because I heard that part before too much already. And I think an epic piece like this shouldn't end in a fadeout. That may be just me, though :)

Nah fuck it, all 10s. Don't stop.