I like the walking bass and generous use of the ride cymbal. The electric guitar and saxophone solos really help hit the piece home too. The fade-out ending was a tad lazy, though, and I think there’s a lot of room for more creativity in the arrangement of the piece. The structure could be fleshed out a lot more, and I also might’ve liked to see the rhythmic content of some of the harmines (piano, bass, etc.) be a little less square at times. The distortions on the guitar at around :42 are a nice touch, though. You won me over with your excellent melody writing and the solid production quality, but going forward you’ll probably need a more structurally complete piece to advance in this competition. Keep it up, BlueCheeseCult! ^_^

Mixing, mastering, and balance
1.75/2
Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety
.75/1.5
Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture
2/2
Instrumentation and sound design
1/1
Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness
1.5/1.5
Originality and uniqueness
1/1
Overall (how do the elements above interact?)
.5/1
Composite score
8.5/10

nice guitar playing! surprised how well the heavier rock lead tone works in this genre, and i think using a harder drum sound as opposed to brushes helps a lot. that said, i think the drum programming needs a lot more dynamic variation, especially in the ride cymbal which really needs to ebb and flow with its accents. the delay effect is a little messy and i'd only enable it for specific notes like the wail at 1:02; it especially messes with your fast non-quarternary passages in the first solo. would love to hear more than 90 seconds of this, with some clean guitar in the rhythm section as well.

important notes on my NGUAC review process: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1476427/18#bbspost26965604_post_text

It's a bop, solos are all nice. Guitar is a bit hot, and the ride sticks out it needs some human character!