EspyoNG's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[AndrewCR × Upcoda - Glee]

This is honestly such a great track! The arrangement is super duper interesting: you go from all these cool glitch hop sections with all these cool 8-bit effects perfectly placed on the composition. The transition into the bridge section is phenomenal: I loved all the instrumentation such as the piano and those pitch-bended percussions, the bass... everything pretty much. The build-up after that is pretty much perfect, because the bass, drums and ambience have done a great job at building up the tension. I think that the build-up was also the part that was best mixed out of any other section.

The only thing that didn't convince me so much is the final drop; I initially thought that the reason the transition between the build-up and the drop wasn't as smooth was because of the sudden change in rhythm, but after re-listening to this (it is that good) I think that the overall sudden change in everything as a whole threw me off. Perhaps you could just remove the first half and let the rest of the drop do the hard work. Otherwise, another idea could be to maybe make the first half of the drop half-timed (kind of like in the outro) and then have it slightly build-up to the faster, crazier second half, which would add more uniqueness to the already very unique arrangement.

Overall, you guys have done a really great job on this regardless! I would be very proud of having made this if I were in your shoes >:D

P.s. I have just read the author comments. Honestly, @AndrewCr, listen to Virtual Riot; he's been amongst my favourites in the dubstep scene for the better part of a decade now, and his arrangements are simple, but great. But in general, listen to more music, especially if it's made professionally.

AndrewCr responds:

Thanks so much for the review!

I have a background in acoustic music, and what I've learned is that repetition without introducing anything new is one of the worst and most desperate things you can do. I tend to carry my knowledge of acoustic music to electronic music, despite them being two completely different worlds. I guess that's one habit to get rid of :)

[Way Back Home (NGUAC 2024 Version)]

This is some beautiful lofi music. I love how catchy the melodies in-between the verses are. Very memorable track! Not to mention the great vocals as well; for some reason they remind me a lot of Fox Stevenson, but it could just be me.

Really pretty piece of work!

AveragePhoe responds:

Thank you so much! And "Bring A Coat" was a direct inspiration when making this song, so that's a big honor!

[Don’t rizz my dog up]

That is some pretty cool breakcore! I found a few issues though:

1 - The breaks are muddy and distorted. Distortion can be good, but in this case it makes the complex rhythms a bit unclear to the ear.
2 - The sound selection is a little weird. There is this sample you use at the beginning that repeats throughout the song, and it sounds pretty neat! But then when the song reaches its climax, there are some weird noises scattered around. You could make both the sample and sound effects fit by using effects in a clever way or just clean the sound effects up perhaps.
3 - Where are the high frequencies? I put this track on my music software to check the frequency spectrum and the highs are literally not there. It makes this sound muddier than it needs to be.

Overall, it was a neat attempt at breakcore, and I thought the drums were composed quite well for this being your 6th track! However, you should definitely work on making cleaner, clearer mixes and making good arrangement decisions.

TokenCool responds:

Thanks for the honesty and I will try to make my next song more cleaner, TY :D

[when i dont have the words]

This is probably the most ethereal breakcore work I have heard, ever. I don't see this atmospheric beauty and prettiness in songs that much.

OVERSCORE responds:

Thank you so much for dropping by, Speed!! I love how much potential for atmospheric beauty and emotion there is in breakcore, that’s why it’s one of my favorite genres rn.

[Closer to Me]

Man, it is such a shame you couldn't finish this! It is a track that is so far filled with such strong feelinga of hope, pain and determination; it is hard to pin-point the specific feeling it portrays most.

Mixing was very clean too btw. Great job on that!

FarFromSundown responds:

I really do want to revisit this one at some point. I just suddenly lost inspiration and direction about halfway through writing the 2nd verse. Maybe one day!

[-The Barista-]

This one's quite unique! I like how groovy it feels. Very neat in my opinion!

Creeperforce24 responds:

Thanks!

[The Process]

Such a simple sounding track, but it has such a neat atmosphere around it! In my head, it's like the feeling of trying to run out of an endless hallway.

Only critique ig is the loudness of the mix; it's clean enough, just needs to be a tiny bit louder imo.

Thetageist responds:

Alright, thank you! What’s a good loudness to aim for when mixing? I have a hard time telling when something being too loud is the fault of mixing or just me having my headphones turned up too much.

[Vxrto. - trust me]

Damn this is really good! Felt like the high frequencies were lacking just a tiny bit, but I guess that is lofi for ya. I really fw the middle with the interesting drum pattern, I would only add some crazy percussion under it tbh. Great track!

itsmevxrto responds:

thank you!