How did I not review this? Crap!
Well, here I am. Let me start off with the beginning and just how much the beginning impressed me right off the bat. That sound design is AWESOME! I love your choice of starting the track with all sine sounds. Not only does does it sound awesome, it gives your sound a unique breadth and atmosphere. Perfect. However, I do have to complain a bit - later on, at around 1:46, you start a build up. Here, there's a chord sound which I'm not a fan of. Its entrance sounds kinda cheesy, if you ask me. But most everything else was crafted so perfectly, it makes up for it.
Atmosphere. You rock! The spacey, dystopian image that the song creates is quite vivid (haha, Newgrounds is trying to auto correct me to "utopian" :/ ). I looked up Ersatz, and I found "artificial, inferior substitute". Not sure what that means, but alright.
Next, originality. You rock again! This track, being the experimental little track it is, has a lot of awesome ideas in it. A lot of interesting things happened, despite them maybe being a bit underwhelming. But you didn't stick with the norm! Good job!
Now, melodic ideas. And this is where the real complaints start. I like your melodic content, it's really cool! But the problem is, there's so much more that could have been achieved! This song could have had so much more depth and overall amazingness, but sadly all of that didn't happen.
I'm gonna say the same thing for your progression. The build around 2:00 had me waiting for the track to go somewhere, but nothing big happened. It just kinda died, if you ask me.
Overall, this track is really really cool! Some awesome ideas were presented here. Sadly, they may not have been executed in the best way possible, so a lot of possible development remains untouched. Regardless, this is a stunning entry! Great job! (Oh, and I can't say "good luck" anymore cuz it's already over :/ sry man) 5/5, 9/10, awesomeness!