Leaderboard

After a few listens, I'm hearing many of the same positives and negatives brought up by my fellow judges, but finding myself far more entranced by what you got right with this arrangement than off-put by any of its shortcomings. The sound design, while perhaps not as lush and full during the first 3 minutes as I would have hoped, is still quite dynamic and features a constantly-evolving set of sounds to hold my interest. This is a fantastic example of a track that fully justifies its length despite not making any radical evolutions over its runtime. The varying bass tones sound great, and each new retro arpeggio always seems to enter at just the right time. I understand the critiques regarding the choir sample, but I personally found the issue to be overstated in terms of impact. Yes, a lot of the sounds in the mix were exposed and would have benefitted from an additional element of padding to glue everything together better, and I would say this is probably my biggest gripe with the track overall. I'll also echo the comments regarding the drums for the first few minutes, but the underwhelming drums in the first half of the track do make the ones that come afterward sound more intense by contrast, so by the end of the arrangement, I found it to not be a terribly big deal. You got where you needed to go eventually ? YES

What a beautiful intro - that subtle string pad dripping in reverb, followed by a very reflective and serene piano, set to a backdrop of what could be battle noise in the distance, evokes images of standing on an ancient battlefield, looking on as two armies go at one another. The kick brings us back to Earth at 0:35 and we snap out of our shell-shock as we’re hit square in the chest with a wall of sound. I love the stylistic choice here to go big for the main source melody’s introduction, although the lead for me feels a little thin. I’d like a little more character to the saw, perhaps with some layering or extra stereo space to help it stand out. The lead at 1:51 is a more interesting sound, although the balance between the lead and drums here feels the wrong way round - the kick and snare are way up in the mix, and those filtered scream effects are also punching above their weight. There’s some nice detail in the lead synth that you really have to strain to hear, which is a shame. 2:46-3:11 is my favourite section, stripping everything back to the piano playing the source melody with that gorgeous reverb from the intro and a soft synth bell on the arp. The fire sound effects sound like they’ve been bitcrushed, and are a bit distracting to me - I’d have preferred them to be more natural sounding, and it’s an interesting choice to compress them and use them as a short build at 3:10. I felt that a little ill-fitting for the mood, however if you’re going for a calm/hectic juxtaposition then I suppose it’s a success! The unresolved melody into more distorted noise to finish was a good way to work in elements of another source tune, and hint at some sort of battle aftermath, where lives can be rebuilt and melodies resolved. This track isn’t without its flaws - some balance issues in the mixing being the main offenders - however as a whole the creativity is excellent, and it tells a cohesive story to the listener. YES