Official ADM Review:
Much like Quarl recently did to me, I'll start out by thanking you for writing down the purpose of this piece. Reminding me of old Laurent Garnier tracks, I can totally dig how this would be a great note to end a night of partying on; it has the right vibe both in terms of melodies as well as rhythms. Close your eyes and you can almost feel the crowd moving around you, tired, sweaty and probably off their gourds on E. Especially he final section, with the beat dropping away is a real nice come-down, seeing everyone home safe.

In terms of production and sound design, it's pretty damn spot on. The selected samples work really well together in terms of texture and everything has a clear place in the mix - from a technical viewpoint, you clearly know what you're doing. I could dance to this, even though I'm not a particular fan of the genre (or haven't been anymore, for a couple of decades).

On the other hand there's the composition, which I can look at in two ways: there's music made for listening to, and there's music made for experiencing. By your own admission, this track falls in the latter category, being composed for a very specific purpose. But for this purpose, I think it falls short. You can't come down from a night of partying and dancing in just under 8 minutes - you'd get hurt. For the intended purpose, I'd expect the track to be much longer, the build up (much like Garnier's stuff) much more subtle, the rhythmless section stretched seemingly endlessly, with the instruments meandering about and gradually dissolving into something equally pleasurable and incomprehensible. OK, that last bit may be personal preference, but immersion is key here, and in that respect time = money.

If you look at it from the other perspective, there's not much to see. This clearly wasn't written as listening music, as for that purpose it's way too long and uneventful. Had you not added your description, I would have listened to it as such, and your score would probably have reflected this for the worse. As it is, I'll stick with your explanation and tell you you have a storyboard for the track you intended to create, with a lot of merits, but not finished as is. And going for something on an epic scale like that to finish within two weeks, yeah that's steep - which makes it a risky move to submit a track like this for a competition.

You're absolutely on to something here, no denying, and I hope you manage to crank up the epic to 11 on tracks like this. Good luck on the competition!

Official NGADM audio review

Although i had different submissions to review on, i particularily wanted to take a bite off yours as well. It is very bold of you to make an extraordinarily structured track for a contest like NGADM. I even think it is unusual to hear it in prog house scene, but I like your guts with an attempt do create and submit something like this.
I have to be very critical about your submission since progressive house needs to be as precise and clean as possible. To be exact, I need to balance out the categories with other submissions. Maybe yours isn't that focused on sound design, but on atmosphere and structure.
The track starts right off the bat with a pretty complex groove right away. I think it would be more natural to start it with a singular kick drum and the shaker pattern to make it even more progressive and interesting. The progression kicks off pretty fast, and thats alright, but make sure you're adding the elements consistently. What I think about too is probably making the transition more prominent and with some hints that another element is coming. For example the percussion groove starts playing abruptly at 01:02 and the break at 01:48 does it too. What I'd reccommend is adding risers or automating the reverb of some elements.
I like the resonant BP acid stabs in the background and the pads coming after the second minute however they don't really make me excited throughout the entire 2 minutes. What I mean is that moment is very bland in terms of arrangement and progression even with some crashes here and there, the pattern sounds the same and its predictable. Make it more intuitive and saturated with elements. I think you maybe overdid it of making it super minimalistic.
The part after 4 minutes is though what makes the track interesting. The transition to piano with the kick being removed was a nice little touch and the sound choice is great. I think the percussion is a bit too loud in that part though and it should be regulated with automation whether its filters or gain. The outro is very soothing, maybe richer pads and more bass could make the outro more dominant and prolific. The pads sound a bit cheap imo. Really like the automation you've put there in the end.
From a mixing standpoint the track is very clean, almost perfect. The hats have some resonance over at 13.5K and that's what makes the ears a bit tired. It would be good to add a low mid dip on the master over around 200hz to make the mix less boomy, and maybe balance out the stereo field. There are no phasing issues whatsoever, but it's very inconsistent in some parts. The pads are less mono compatible than other elements.
So with a little bias, I think it's very hard to judge a track with a structure like yours, and what's making this complicated for you, is that you need to maintain your listener's interest throughout the entire track until the outro. It's not really clever to submit a track that needs to have this type of criteria to a contest, when other submissions make a regular spoiled GP listener way more excited in a span of 3 minutes and less. I kinda know progressive house you do, it's very hard to understand it as a regular listener. I wrote some points a bit too harshly on purpose so you can think how much can your track affect the listeners experience, and honestly I had to re-listen to it a couple of times and change my score because of some changes I did not even notice at first. For a contest, make atleast the changes a bit more unpredictable yet a lot more prominent, "with a little bias."

wish you the best in this contest. hope youll make another house track next round ;D
-CRY

Very clean sounding, I love it.

Official Review for NGADM Round 2 :

I honestly don't have much to say about the first 4 minutes.

It starts with a retro house loop, which reminds me of 80's/90's musics.
You slowly introduce new elements, which is pretty cool. I really like the bass and ear candies in particular.

I do think it dragged on for too long though, until 4:23 when you finally introduce some more changes (cool lead btw).

The outro is pretty nice, especially because the bells and piano.
Also, that flute at the end is the cherry on top :)

So yeah, I just don't really have much to say about this song, it's pretty hard to criticize it. It's the kind I could put in the background while I'm doing something else, chilling.

I wish I didn't have 20 instruments going on at the same time because it would make it a lot easier to have a clean mix like this one