(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)

these heavy electronic sounds definitely convey a strong 'cyber' vibe that's something i pick up from the artwork you chose for sure. i would've liked to hear some glitchy effects or weird effect modulations to really dial in the glitched-out feeling from the pixelations and background of the image. still, the sound choices and the overall kinda mischievous, confident mood of the song seem quite fitting. and the core gritty synth + big drums combo drives the song well.

i think there could stand to be a little more variation in the tune overall - too much leans away from the style a little bit but a contrasting section that's a bit more than "cutting out some of the parts to feature a new one with the same cadence" would be a welcome way to kinda complete this song. making the individual synth lines have a bit more of an intentional direction or arc would also help it out a bit i think! but what's here is certainly a solid base and quite enjoyable to jam out to.

AIM 2023 Judge Review

It's amazing to see that this entry not only managed to get scouted, but also front-paged so close to the deadline. I know I said it before in the chat, but I thought it was worth another mention here. As for the entry itself, I think there's a lot of things I enjoy here. The choice of chiptune is fitting for this anthropomorphic computer character and I like that the recurring melody with the large leap and the smaller steps downward. The synths are a bit on the loud side, especially once we get to the quieter sections, but the louder sections feel like they're mixed decently enough.

With character art, I think a lot of the inspiration comes from how the characters are portrayed musically. This piece does a fairly good job at picking sounds and a composition that illustrate this character, but I think it could have gone a little further. The computer character being anthropomorphic feels like it would have been a great opportunity to humanize some aspects of the music, perhaps playing around with aspects of velocity, phrasing and/or imperfections in how the rhythms hit or how the notes are played. The caption within the image, "CHECK OUT THE MESS YOU MADE", also comes across a bit passive-aggressive, and I think this track could have conveyed that more in the melody. I think there might have been an attempt at it, but I didn't really find this track to be that strong enough to really characterize this individual other than them just being a computer. There's also a lot of glitchiness in the background and that was another chance to incorporate some glitch effects into the track.

Overall, I like what I'm hearing here - I just think there was more potential to have taken the characterization further in the music, especially given the elements present in the art. The melody was nice enough, but once it got to the later half of the piece, I just didn't feel like the repetition of these ideas was catchy enough for its recurrence to be warranted. However, I do think this piece nails the computer-like aspect of the art. The constant looping and sound design do make me think of a lightly pissed off machine and I think that works well enough to give the piece a decent amount of relevance to its art inspiration.

good mix down, i sense a lack of side chain which actually isnt a problem until moments like 1:22 where all sound is cut for the snare and then the snare gets muffled by the synths. the square lead that comes in 00:48 is a weird one, it doesnt share the same room as anything else in the mix, which is probably a product of how loud it is. it has a resonant frequency that destroys the mix whenever it hits but other than that, pretty good chip tuney track. the bass is nice and crunchy with a nice distorted saw layer.