(disclaimer: AIM judge review here! these are just my opinions and thoughts, you can take from them whatever you like! music is subjective and all that. <3)

it's cool to hear such a mix of acoustic and digital sounds, and there's something a bit unnerving and melancholy about the piece which i think matches with the artwork you chose... those lit-up windmills, those gnarled branches, sure are menacing. it's conceptually interesting the way you tried to bridge all those disparate elements; and not an easy task either.

the instrumentation could perhaps be used more effectively; the orchestral parts are all written in fairly close range of one another when it might feel more expansive and open (doubly suiting the wide landscape of the artwork) to be spacing out the chords towards the bass register and creating some motion down there too. the whole first half of the song feels really wanting for some lower-pitched sounds. also the writing doesn't "go places", parts do a lot of looping, which isn't inherently bad but not what i would expect out of orchestral writing; it might be useful to think about where the lines are going, to pay attention to their overall shapes and directions, and write with more intentionality, like heading towards particular high points and low points, or reusing (in new ways) familiar shapes/rhythms/patterns that came from earlier parts of your melodies and supporting lines. this would go a long way towards making everything feel cohesive!

the last section with the drums feels particularly cool to me, even though its tone is a bit disparate from the rest. i like all the rhythmic elements at play there. there's a lot of cool ideas in this tune, and with some more careful handling of all its parts it could really succeed.

AIM 2023 Judge Review

You've definitely put thought into the sound design in a way that really connects it with the art. The intro feels magical in a foreboding manner and I like the way the strings here feel like they're shifting into one another. The bells are a nice touch to the texture. I also like the way the track evolves through the sections, first introducing the electric guitar against the orchestral backdrop before eventually switching to the electronic elements at 2:07.

I really wish a lot of what's being described in the Author Comments came through in the music because unfortunately, the composition doesn't work for me at all. A lot of the melodies feel clueless and while not dissonant, there doesn't really seem to be much going for them. Everything feels like it just chugs along and the only sense I have of where the sections flow is when more instruments are being added or taken away or the rhythms slightly change. The melody and chords feel incidental to the piece and I feel like that's a huge loss to the emotional impact.

Overall, I think you are pointing in the right direction of how to convey elements in the art through the sound design. With a more purposeful composition, I think it would allow what these parts represent in your description to resonate more emotionally and atmospherically.