I like the sense of climax into :18. The snare you have in there sounds really high-pitched and thin, but I appreciated when you added a little more bass to it at :42. That kick sample also wasn’t my favorite - almost sounds more like an effect than a kick drum. It had a really bizarre timbre. There’s a lot of minimalism in this piece between the two drops, and not a lot of melodic content (arpeggios don’t count as melodic content). A lot of the synths you have in here sound really unpolished, dry, or simply generic. The synth at 1:48 is probably the clearest example of this. You need something to fill in the texture at those drops, and if it’s not going to be other instruments, it should at least be reverb. The composition itself is pretty underwhelming too - you didn’t even vary the drop the second time around, didn’t offer a lot of structural contrast, no interesting bridges/breakdowns/re-intros. Overall, I think you could’ve done a lot more with this piece, and you even acknowledge in the description that it’s based on very cliched themes. It’s not so much bad as uninspired. I think the mix was clean, although once again some reverb would really help give this content some more flair. I’d love to hear you continue working on this piece, but give it a little more character and atmosphere. Keep at it, man!

5/10