carboluka's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[NG Mall Music Collab: Closing Time]

Soooo so so fun, both coming up a liminal mall song and hearing what everybody else came up with. Y'all did a great job!

(Btw, if you liked my entry, I published the standalone track right here!)
https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1404594

[Beep Block Bunch]

Fantastic job :)

[Like Solstice Dawn]

Some of those breaks are filthy as fuuuuck, I love everything about this. Extremely solid composition, solos and vibe

[sillystep]

You broke my ankles and knees with that intro misdirection, GG

SoTshu responds:

yeah im kinda hoping that people wont immediately leave the song with this intro lmao
much love!!

[Tutorial]

Oh, guess I can listen to it on here too lol

[The Cinematic Collab!]

Peak collab

I wish I made something longer, but glad everyone else did a great job 🔥

It's nice to hear different types of "cinematic music": it's often labeled as one single thing, but it really is an enormous spectrum of possibilities and subgenres.

[Starlit Champagne]

Damn.

[Who Dun It? A Murder Mystery Audio Drama]

Oh daaaaam... didn't know it was gonna be this good, like I'm actually blown away by the quality of the voice acting, the story, the pacing, the sound design. 100% worth the wait, thanks for letting me sneak in a song!

AhWham responds:

Hey thank you for coming in clutch with it!

[FIGHT OF THE FLAMES - Boss Music]

Heyo, here to judge. Lengthy song ay?

No worries, listened to it all. Banger.

I will not analyze each section since it's NINE MINUTES LONG, but I'll admit I was checking for one thing in particular: would I realize that much time had passed when the song was over? Time flew by, I'll tell you that much.

I like how you went for an hip-hop style, with drum breaks and countless samples; it makes it almost sound like this enemy is made of recycled pop culture material, and I find that fascinating. I'll admit I never played Terraria or know of the OST, but looking at the graphics, yeah that checks. Might be pretty unorthodox compared to the rest of the competition, but I admire the courage.
Sound design is excellent and the solo, although short, pretty crazy and trundular.

Some time signature changes are appreciated to keep the beat fresh, and I find the switch to a trap/drill beat later on pretty fun. The climax towards the end (forgive me, I don't remember the timestamp lol) is well done. The MVP though must of course be the way you endlessly modulate the BPM, that's the secret ingredient to not make such a long song feel stale, that was a great intuition on your part.

Only nitpick is that 2:15 is pretty odd since it sounds a bit hollowed out compared to the rest of the song, but I understand that keeping up this pace can burn you out in no time, so that's just plain humanity at play.
Great job 👍

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Restlessness check: 14

LHPixel8 responds:

Thanks for the review :)

[Andras (Author of Discords)]

Heyo, here to judge.

Straight away, sound library quality is through the roof (the choir sounds greatttt), plus the subtle layer of organic + synthetic is always a great texture; the call and response between the choir and the horns is neat and well-integrated.

I'm hearing quite a lot of time modulation, they work really well individually. The 5/4 section being this mellow is quite interesting, especially this early in the song (the minor 7th chord in there is really odd though, it's a bit too jazz-fusion-ush for the vibe you were going for imo). The strings arpeggio with the brass screaming on top is great, but I don't like how it gets cut off at 1:15 abruptly: in general, everytime we go back to that section, there's always an awkward jump which I feel could have been polished more. It is quite an imperial composition, so I understand how difficult is to make all transitions work.

The orchestration is absolutely legendary, fantastic job with the strings and the brasses and the woodwinds, the melodies are too notch in creating tangible tension and mystery.

Mix-wise the volumes are on point, but I'm hearing some distinct clicks (not sure if that's because of an incredibly fast attack from the violins, but it's pretty distracting nonetheless) and in one or two points the peaks clip a bit.

As for bossbattle-ness, I think it could fit, but it really needs some more driving rhythmic elements.

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Restlessness check: 11

Possibly responds:

Thanks for the detailed review, appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts.