I love it when you guys do this to me.

So often I hear intros and think, this track is gonna be nasty, and then the beat drops and the tune is SO much more mellow than the intro.

In this tune I hear the intro and think, this track is gonna be mellow, and then the bass drops and it's SO much more nasty than the intro.  AWESOME.

This is one of the top contenders for sure.  You're showing everyone else what re-sampling is all about.

The arrangement is sick, and the mix is pretty much on point as well.  I LOVE that you give the track room to breath.  Yes, you have a lot of elements, and they all go together beatifully, but you also understand the importance of having minimal moments, where it's just simply the main drums and the main bassline, and everything else backs off, leaving room to re-build your tension.  Niceley done.

I had to listen to this a few times.  I was TRYING to find something bad to say.  Wanna know what I came up with?

I think the hats are maybe a little too loud?

seriously, that's the worst thing I could think of to say.

Not my favorite of the group stylistically, but when I have nothing to say I have nothing to say, and that means you get this:

10

I have 2 guesses who wrote this, and whoever it is already knows I LOVE it, before they even read my review.

This is the other area of drum n bass that I love at the deepest core of myself.  Nice and "GRRR!!!"  This stuff just relates to me on a personal level, something to do with my inner demons I guess.

Is that Slipknot I hear being sampled?  Yes it is.  Nice.

This is another one I had to go back and listen to a few times, TRYING to find something bad to say.  And for anyone who didn't write this who's reading this review, this is not a case of me rating the track highly for it's style.  If you listen to it objectively, it's all there:

The drums are crisp, I can hear the kick thump and click, I can hear the snare thud and thwack.  The atmosphere is lush.  The bassline has proper sub, mid, and high.  The arrangement is solid, stays interesting throughout, but still maintains a groove.  This tune manages to find a niche without being over the top, and whilst maintaining a voice of it's own.

It's got everything a reviewer could want.

Start shopping this to labels.  Send it to all the regular big name djs for this sound.  It's a smasher.

10.  no question.  I wish my angry shit was this good.

*edit* okay, tonight I had a chance to mix this tune with some other stuff, (on better speakers) and on those speakers it became clear that the tune is actually lacking sub bass.  even when I turned the bass up on the mixer, it just kinda made the drums bassier.  I'm not sure what the deal is there.  My initial instinct was to take points away, not much, I'd still give it a 9, but then I thought again, and decided that I judged all the tracks against each other on the same set of speakers, and should not dock you points when maybe my thoughts about all the others would change as well if I were to try to mix them/play them on better speakers...  Sorry for the ramble, but yeah, work on that sub, otherwise, SICK.

first thing I have to say is, it's a rare thing in this competition to hear string arrangements, and not only did you do it, but you did it very well here.  I don't know if you sequenced them or sampled them, but they sound real nice.

stylistically this is one of my favorites.  The mix could have been better.  What's happening is:

The drums are too loud.  Maybe too much top end on the snare, not enough low end on it.  hard to tell on these speakers.  I just know a lot of the tune is getting lost behind the main drums.
The bass isn't loud enough for starters, but more specifically: the sub is okay to the drums, but there's no mid and possibly too much high.
The pads/atmospheres in the section leading to the break are definitely lost until the drums are completely gone.

That being said, this is still one of my favorites, but there are a couple of other tunes in this round of competition that I think were essentially FLAWLESS productions, but know that it's only up against that standard that you're not my winner.

9

so for this round of the competition, I'm not home, which means I'm not on my usual speakers, which means I can't comment too much on the finer points of anybodies mixing.

So I guess I'm here to talk about arrangement?

This tune interests me from the beginning.  Great use of samples with the horn section and such.

Maybe it's these speakers, but it seems like your kick drum is virtually non existant.  I know where it's supposed to be, so my brain keeps putting it in there, but I don't actually hear it much at all.  That could use some eq/volume adjustments for sure.  Maybe the drums in general are too top heavy.  Try rolling off some of the top end eq of your break.  I'm not saying it's a sure fix, I'm just saying try it.  I also feel like maybe the bassline needs more midrange, but again that may be the speakers I'm listening on.  (pretty ghetto computer speakers)

The bassline around the 2:45 mark sounds off by a 16th or 8th note.  It sounds like it's INTENTIONALLY off, and I understand that, but I don't think it works.

Everything else here sounds pretty great to me.  Good quality stuff here.  Maybe a little redundant towards the end, like I was expecting a 'fade out' or something, but then again, that's drum n bass, gotta have the outro to mix the next tune in, so you're not losing any points for it.

The intro is where this track really shines.  I would have liked to have seen the breakdown be more similar to the intro, but again, that's not a point loser for you.

My scoring is gonna be different than usual because I can't go over the mixdown much at all, so no two parter, just a simple number:

7 - it's good, I like it, and it's even probably sign-able, but doesn't have enough of that "oh MY GOD" mojo to make it top choice for me.

this one sounds pretty pro from the opening seconds.

builds nice tension with the intro, makes me curious to see where it goes.

Beatiful pad work.

You had me till the drop.

post drop:  bassline is WAY too quiet.  it should be making my brain shake, but instead I gotta lean towards the speaker to hear it.

Nice drum edits, old school kine.

Definitely old school vibes throughout here.  Classic amen choppage, lush pads, filtered rhodes, you've got ALL the hallmarks.

In all seriousness this is one of the better entries this time around. Not the best mix, but arrangement wise you're on point.

Bring up those subs and you've got yourself a solid tune man.

gonna give you a 7.  One of the better tunes in this comp for sure, but still not the best, in my humble opinion.

this is just my taste, and you're not losing any points for it, but the repeated vocal intro is REALLY annoying to me.

Mix wise, I think the vocal is too loud.

Snare is a little thin.  Maybe a volume issue, maybe an eq issue.  I'm not sure.

I can hear the kick/snare well, but the rest of the drums are totally buried in the mix.  I can only hear the ghost snare/hats when I REALLY stop and try to hear them.

Next problem, the vocal doesn't line up right in some places.  By the time missy says "I can't stand the rain" she's almost a step behind.

Besides that I don't have much to say.  The problem I have with reviewing tracks like these is that this is totally the sound of DnB that I can't personally stand for any more than 15 seconds.  That's just my taste, and it's not gonna affect your score, but I thought I'd explain why I'm not getting deeper on you, because between the style and the vocal I'm just annoyed here.

Definitely not getting any points for originality, but neither am I this month.

I'm gonna give you a 6, as I've already given a 7 to a track I thought was much better.

you're gonna hate me.

for starters, there's too much high passing going on here, and not nearly enough low end/thump/growl/whatever you wanna call it, which is hilarious because according to the winamp analyzer you've got more low end than anything, but I sure don't hear it.

my 2nd major issue is that by halfway through the track I don't want to hear the bongos any more, let alone by the end.

This is another one of those tunes that has some really good ideas in it, but doesn't really go anywhere.  It sounds kind of 'cookie-cutter' to me.  Like you wrote an 8 bar loop and then tried to stretch it out into a full track without adding anything else.

Do you realize your break is high passed for the remainder of the track after the breakdown?  I don't know if you meant to do that or not, but it really isn't working for me.

Once again we have an entry here that has GREAT potential, but sounds like it was rushed.  You could stand to work on the transitions, and the mix.  Less top end, more low end, less usage of the same break/bongo throughout the entire track, mix it up a little.

6 - could be better, could be worse.

the very first sound of this track reminds me of a coversation I was having with my buddy Antikkz recently:  There are not enough of these sounds in drum n bass today.  The whole thing that got me into DnB to begin with was all these sounds that were pretty much un-tangable.  You know, you listen to some stuff and it's like "oh, that's a horn" or "oh, that's a vocal" or "oh, that's a reece" or whatever, but these sounds, you hear and it's like "what the hell is that?"  So what I'm saying is, fuck yes, bring back the TECH.

This is a good mixer, I can tell from the get-go.  Simple drums to start, but those great techy background blips and taps that can be easily mixed in and out of ANY track.  This is TOTALLY something I would have played back in 2000-2002-ish, and maybe again today.

Here's the problem.  As I'm typing all of this I'm waiting for the track to open up and go somewhere, and then I click over to windows media player to find out it's almost DONE.

That's not good man.  What you essentially have written is a 5 minute intro to a non existant track.

I'd take this back to the drawing board if I were you.  What you have is VERY cool, but it's really only a couple minutes worth of tune, not an entire tune on it's own.

There's no real bassline yet, there's no build, there's no climax, no tension.  Like I said, it's a 5 minute intro.

There is MASSIVE potential here, but the track as it is is not enough to consider a winner here.  Great ideas, and good sounds, but it needs to go SOMEWHERE.  Think of a track like a book, it's gotta have a beginning, middle, and end.

I don't know what else to say, so I'll get to the point:

5 - add another movement and you may have yourself a 10, but you can't score that high with the worlds longest intro to nothing.