I hope you all found peace at the end of the chaotic tunnel. I reviewed the tracks on Composition, Brief and Production; in order of importance.
dadomachado - Humpft
Great title and start! I really dig all the times the band becomes one on the descending line.
At 0:50 the groove gets a bitlost because the timing of the synth lead. The same thing happens at the end. A shame, because because for the rest it really feels much like a band playing together.
Nice energetic guitar solo and tone. The hammond solo now almost feel like a drum solo, because it’s lacking some volume and bite (mids and distortion?).
It’s high energy, but under control. Not very chaotic or driving me mad. I could imagine a band playing this on an outdoor festival.
Minor nerdy things: the guitar solo has the same type of stereo effect as the Left rhythm guitar. I think it would be nice just to have it smack dab in the middle.
The widening on the left rhythm guitar feels a bit uncomfortable because of some phase/polarity shifting. That’s why it almost completely disappears when the track is collapsed in mono. On headphones it doesn’t bother me though.
EsteveCorbera - JamSessionOne
Nice how the rhodes enters; so sparse. Reminded me of Steely Dan’s Aja or Gaucho.
The sax melody could be more lively if it also plays some notes off the beat.
When the drum goes the the ride cymbal, the rest of the ‘band’ doesn’t really seem to go along with the increase of energy. This difference of energy is even more apparent in the bass and drum break. Perhaps that would work better if the drums go really quiet and sparse (rimstick?) and the bass plays some new melodic ideas. The bass is fairly high in a lot of places. You could try transposing a few notes down an octave (for variation).
For me the song has a calm, nostalgic, slightly sad feel to it; Maybe not completely at ease, but also not chaotic to me.
Minor mix thing:
It would probably sound more together (and more like Steely Dan) if you would take the drum reverb down quite a bit (I mean 10-20dB softer).
Gloo - Swamp Head
Like the chords and voicings of the intro.
The sampled chord that announes the change around 0:34 is very cooky indeed. The count-in might have been stronger with just the sample and the whole band kicks in together on the second part 0:39.
The 80’s verb snare seemed a bit out of place and distracting; The rest sounds more interesting to me.
Cool weird overlapping lines in the third part until 1:40. At times perhaps a bit too off, but for this brief it’s good when it goes a bit too far. The following fourth part takes it even a step further. Some polytonal stuff going on it seems. Everything in relationship to the bass seems crooked. I can feel the chaos. I dig how it then goes back to the beginning at 2:20. Love the contrast between the calm and weird.
Cool, daring ending.
becsei_gyorgy - Arroz con mango
Good trumpet sound!
Nice choice starting scarce, without drums. Feels really good when it does enter.
Around 1:50 the synth en rhodes both seem to want the spotlight, but neither of them really shines because they’re in each others way (in playing and volume). The arrangement under the trumpet solo is a lot more effective.
The jazzy swing and hooky bass line, felt pretty upbeat and light to me. It’s not driving me crazy or anxious. To me it feels energetic and perhaps slightly chaotic, but in a joking way.
Erik traks - Warlock
Cool, promising beginning. Nice classic sounds and harmony. It’s calm, but you feel something is about to happen.
The drums going away seemed early, before it got to full strength. I would expect the whole band going full blast after that, but it gently builds up again, in swing now. Clever the way you rhythmically modulate back to the straight groove at 2:20. For this months brief I don’t think it very necessary to be subtle about the changes though, ah well.
The promising intro didn’t really get fulfilled for me, because we keep hanging in this D minor Blues vamp. For a jazz/fusion track, it would be nice to have a harmonic modulation somewhere (in the swing B section for example) and/or have a section that’s more chord based instead of scale based. This also leads us to ours months’ theme/brief. It felt pretty stable and relaxed to me, not crazy or driving me crazy.
The melodies and licks in the solos are so good that I didn’t really miss a recurring theme. But then again, I might like it again even more with a theme.
Askandy - And Over And
Okay, we got weird some harmonies in the horns. A lot of major seconds it seems, providing dissonance.
Funny when the bass goes into sort of a samba vibe around 1:20.
Hmm, it did end up driving me crazy. Mainly because it feels like the horns are in a different universe than the drum and bass. So, I think you did a good job to convey the brief of this month. However, the weirdness is always the same type. Would be interesting to feature some parts of the chaotic Hendrixian shred guitar and have the horns do something else (or mute them)
The tones of the horns feel a bit cheesy to me. Perhaps turns them into synths. (it might just be my synthetic horn allergy talking
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! Very serious sound and composition!!!
