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Reviews for "AIM - Bus Stop"

As far as the orchestration goes, I love the contrast in sound between the piano and the bassline. Making a groovy piece was a good choice for connecting with the art, and I enjoyed watching the animation and seeing if the drum beats were matching up with the person's leg kicking out. The bass is pretty interesting, generally holding out its notes until the end of a measure before slipping to the higher notes, which could also be related back to the person in the artwork kicking out.

While this piece has all the components for making a good groove, ultimately I had trouble hearing this piece as actually being groovy. The arrangement, composition and sound design are a good setup, but for me, the execution misses the mark.

After listening through this several times, I think there are two things that stand out to me why I feel this way. One has to do with the production, perhaps even the texture. There are parts where the instruments are supposed to pull out and the drums roll back in, like at 1:08 (slightly), but most significantly, back at 0:23. It feels like there's a ton of reverb that is still tailing out as the instruments pull back, and that ends up muddling the drum rolls and making the roll not as effective.

The other drawback, I believe, has to do with the composition and structure. Part of what makes a piece groovy is knowing when to develop off the groove versus when to change it up and go for different ideas. The changes this piece goes through, at least for me, often felt too abrupt and because nothing really lingers, I don't get to familiarize myself with the grooves and it feels as though the ideas are just zooming past. Perhaps that was the intention, to make it seem like there are vehicles moving past the character in the art as they are waiting for the bus to arrive, but it also doesn't make for a memorable piece.

Overall, I think this entry had a lot of interesting and nice components to it, from the combination of instruments (piano + synths = satisfying). I love the way the piano gets heavily volume oscillated at 1:10 - it's hard to apply effects to piano without coming across as tacky, but this piece pulls it off effortlessly. With more attention to the balancing (when to repeat, when to move on/when to stop, when to go faster, etc.), it would make for an excellently catchy track.