I like the eerie atmosphere at the beginning and the occasional injections of edgy guitar notes. The progression is pretty slow-paced in the first 2 minutes, and I think the gradual fade-out before the beat came in at 1:43 disrupted the flow a bit. It’s a bit jarring how the energy level of the piece changed so suddenly. I like the warm, smooth texture by around 2:15, though, and the climax into 2:54 was nice. I think the drums get a bit buried in the mix at that point, but I appreciate the melodic content and cutesy sound design. The chord progression is a bit cliche, but the rhythmic variations at around 3:30 help keep me engaged, and the guitar solo at 4:00 was a nice touch. The piece feels really conclusive and triumphant by around 5:00, and the organ synth solo at 5:40 was another highlight for me. At some point, I might’ve liked to see a bit more structural contrast from you - a section where you strip away the beat and add some variety to the instrumental palette, that is - especially in such a long piece. The return of the guitar solos at 6:33 was a welcome development, though, and overall you hit the piece home quite well. Something about the atmospheric sections that bookend the piece feel a bit superfluous to me. They’re lovely in and of themselves, but I’m not sure how they contribute to the narrative of the rest of the track. You could try integrating them with each other, but that might be difficult given the very different moods they elicit. Overall, besides the disjointed structure at either end of the piece, I think my biggest problem here is the mixing. The drums could’ve been a lot punchier with some more careful equalizing and a little more compression. The “middle section” between 1:43 and 7:28 could also probably use some more variety and phrasing to keep the listener engaged. That said, I like the sound design, atmosphere, mood, rhythmic elements, and melodic content of the piece a lot. Keep at it, Windman03! :)

Mixing, mastering, and balance
1/2
Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety
1/1.5
Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture
1.75/2
Instrumentation and sound design
.75/1
Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness
1.25/1.5
Originality and uniqueness
.75/1
Overall (how do the elements above interact?)
.75/1
Composite score
7.25/10

That ambient intro is wild. Kinda feels like dementia. We lead from that straight into a 4 to the floor kick and a minor chord progression hanging out around the tonic of I.

Your transition was flowing well up until 2:58 or so. I was expecting another chorus, not a quieter section INTO a chorus.

Your melody writing and chords are quite catchy. It's like disco met olskool diva synth rock. The electric guitar synth could probably be subbed out for another instrument that sounds less obviously like it is trying to do a real instrument's job and draw less scrutiny.

The piece keeps plodding on into 6:39, which it should be mentioned is VERY long for a track that is not some kind of symphony. I really think you could have gone without the ambient outro. Just a hint of it would be enough.

Some comments. Your percussion, particularly crashes, feels a little cheap. Kick, snare, and crash are three elements you want to be clean, pristine, and crispy in a mix. I want to hear more of them in both terms of volume and crunch. You may find some free percussion processing plugins to help you in this endeavor such as KSHMR Essentials Kick and Diablo Lite by cymatics

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!