I like the atmosphere at the beginning. Really wet sound here - I’m almost tempted to say you used too much reverb, but I think that would only be an issue if you had more instruments that potentially distorted the pads here. The little melody that pops in at 1:16 is haunting, and I love the ⅛ note pizzicatos at 1:55 too. At 2:26, it seems like there’s some distortion in the mix, because there’s a popping noise and the pads briefly cut out. My main problem with the piece is that it sounds like it’s just starting to progress into something more epic before it ends. I think that, at this pace, you needed another 3-4 minutes to truly capitalize on the emotional appeal of this piece. I was waiting for the tension of the first 3 minutes to finally break and a deeply cathartic melody to tear my heart in two. Instead, you’ve left me rather torn about this piece as, for all its captivating atmospheric motifs and engrossing textural details, you could’ve done so, SO much more with this. I think my compromise with myself is that I dock you a lot for the lack of structural completeness and variety, and I don’t dock you a lot for everything else. This is beautiful work, but with almost any other piece, I would need a lot more overarching shape and direction to the track to give a score as high as I gave you. Please, pretty please write a killer melody to hit your piece home next time. If you do, I promise you’ll not only stay in the competition, but also get an insta-fave and download from yours truly. Keep up the good work, BlockDaH1! ^_^

Mixing, mastering, and balance
1.75/2
Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety
.5/1.5
Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture
1.75/2
Instrumentation and sound design
1/1
Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness
1.5/1.5
Originality and uniqueness
.75/1
Overall (how do the elements above interact?)
1/1
Composite score
7.75/10