Cyberdevil's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Repurposed Souls - A.I.M. 2018]

You definitely chose an interesting piece to make music for! :D First pixel art I see in the contest. The introduction seems to capture the calm of it. The beautiful sunset. The waves. The boats in the distance. A serene scene... that slowly morphs into something else as you notice the fire on the right side. Something's wrong. Subtle shiver. It keeps building, but never turns to full-out chaos, just like with the picture, it's an almost unnoticeable threat you suddenly discover, the brooding starts... but it never transcends into chaos all the way. The ending: all up to you.

I really like the mood here. It's subtle, and soft, but masterfully brooding after that initial, almost jazzy ambience. Paints the night well, and the gap is seamless before the tension starts. It has an industrial tone to it too, so I'm curious if that's what you went for after the initial phase, or if it's anything like the impression I had above? Great sound work, great balance; great composition overall. The latter part in particular. Really like the tension there.

-cd-

Insomnimatic responds:

Wow, thank you for the review, I really appreciate it. I decided to try something a bit different and go with a soft ambient sound to contrast two things.

The first contrast is that I normally write heavy rock / metal music and I wanted to see what I was capable of doing outside of that but with the same instruments

The second contrast is to the image itself. There would be people hard at work in a setting like this and most people that passed by would see it just as that, a place of work. I however, see a place where people make a living, possibly even living on these barges, the beauty of their surrounding but also the extreme potential for a hazardous event to take place. This space is calming, beautiful and seems to be peaceful but there is still that underlying feeling of danger that could not be ignored. Storms, Possibly falling over the edge not knowing if you'll be swept away by the currents or be lucky enough to survive, Oil that could explode and / or set ablaze everything that is yours.

To answer your question on the industrial tone, I actually created that by accident while writing and loved the sound so I kept it in. I pretty much went into old habits and was playing a few barred chords (set your guitar to a dropped tuning and play the 4th, 5th and 6th string all on the same fret) with some delay and a tad bit of reverb. I started to write around it and everything sort of fell into place.

One other accident that I was pleasantly surprised with is at about 2:00 into the songs, I decided to tremolo pick to get a pleasant "wave-ish" vibe going and the reverb / delay settings I used along with the notes created what sounds to be wind in the background and it brought so much more of the artwork to life.

-Insomnimatic

[AIM-The Creepy Doll]

Definitely getting a pretty creepy vibe from this one. :) Love the strings, the slowness, the heavy steps in the background, the chorus, and just how everything builds up after that initial, softer, phase of piano. It's like walking through a house, and you start noticing something strange, something moving, some darkness closing in, and you start walking faster, and further, and the strangeness starts amounting and closing in on you... it really takes all of this at the right pace too. :) Feels larger than just the doll, like the image was just the first minute of this, and then it starts growing; going elsewhere, but I do love the mood! Classy haunted house vibes and a flawless orchestral build-up. It doesn't stress it either. It goes all the way, but then... bit anticlimatic end! Feels like there would've been room for something more there. Almost perfect. Good sound levels too.

-cd-

[AIM - distance]

Really like the music in this! How it builds and progresses towards the end, with the whistling bit in particular - though it grows almost too sharp towards the end (the volume shift between start and finish is pretty high too)... it's both ambient and melancholy, with appreciatively deep piano especially during the higher parts of song. Seems to convey the atmosphere in the picture perfectly, or rather the atmosphere for that one particular person within the crowd. I imagine this in his mind, while everyone else cheers in joyous unison, their sounds ebbing out in his head, a voyage of thought...

The lyrics feel heartfelt and poetic, and worked well together even though I usually have a difficult time with things that don't rhyme. :) Reading it I felt words often seemed to clog together, like 'years that've gone by', instead of for example 'years that have gone', but when you sing it none of that seems a problem... great emphasis and pacing. Only the drawn out end bits with 'will never ever end' and 'maybe you see me this way' seem somewhat forced.

I also get the impression you sing with a bit of a whisper; a bit restricted. It's an interesting style, and though I wonder if it wouldn't be even more grandiose if you really opened up, somehow, it works well for this song, with that state of emotion it conveys. Clear and vibrant always, and especially with the latter parts, though since I notice you breathe quite often (for example the best *breath* that you *breath* can be) I'm curious if you really do diaphragm level breathing? You do seem like a pro but... if no that might really open up for longer/easier bridges and notes. Just something I wonder...

Overall this was beautiful! Music and song work together nicely and really paint that picture with a whole new layer of emotion.

-cd-

Troisnyx responds:

Thanks for the review!

I haven't had any professional training, but I've been doing my best in most cases to sing from the stomach / diaphragm. I don't always realise it, though. With this one, I think it was much harder to diaphragm-sing without basically projecting my voice out, giving it volume. Being asthmatic doesn't help that sort of singing either, so I wind up almost sighing for breath in softer passages like these. The softness came from someone suggesting to me to listen to Aimee Mann, and I got influenced by a bit of her stuff, in particular, "It's Not" -- and I hoped to convey that same breathless emotion, even if I'm no pro at it aaaaaaa

Any pointers to circumvent something like that would be appreciated. Glad you enjoyed the song! Thanks again!

[AIM - DRUGS]

Well this was definitely a more positive twist to that artwork than I'd expected. :) Didn't think it felt as wholly positive as this does, like an open and airy and awesome experience... but more so a disillusioning and degrading one. With the image I felt her consciousness was crumbling away, while here the clarity comes across so well. Total clarity. Don't relate to the drugs so much as a sense of: flying. Total euphoria. Running. Setting something in motion. But relatability to the image disconsidered this was awesome. An energetic and really pumped-up trance/dance/house track. Never gets dull. The wavy sound's a bit much sometimes, and bit high on the loudness, but otherwise all great! The sound's refreshingly sharp compared to most of the bass-heavy tracks of the type lately.

-cd-

ActualElf responds:

Hey Cyber!

Aye I did have a really uplifting and positive take on this, I saw the artwork as being really light-hearted and a little romanticized. I wanted to try and capture that feeling of a moment being so good you wanna freeze it, which is what the last drop/solo is all about.

The overly wavy sound is something I also really liked about this track myself, it could have been honed in but I'm fond of it, maybe because of the memories attached to the song and sentimentality rather than a critical thinking approach ahaha

This is one of the sounds I want to elaborate on in future, trying to achieve a really polished, pretty and glossy sound. Thanks a lot for another honest and critical review. Pointers, opinions and directions are invaluable - <3

[AIM - Calling]

An inspiring and spacey piece for a starry and equally inspiring painting! When the static starts fading in it's almost like a highway through the stars - traffic of the cosmos. Not as lonely and void of life as I thought but dynamic and full of voices. I like the wavy synth, and how it all jumps into the rhythm in that perfectly slow and spacey way. Really cool. It's like those girls calling out to the stars. Ambient, smooth, with well-blended vocals and a pretty spacey vibe. Though the melody doesn't change much throughout the voices help keep it fresh, and it's always flowing, always fluent and brewing with energy. I love the vibe but: think it would've been nice with some shifts in the beat too. Some moments of silence with the voices. Some more variation, somehow, amidst those loudest bits. Also really compressing the frequency range with the loudness levels there! I know it's a trend but: do feel the dynamics come across better without. Overall great work.

-cd-

5TanLey responds:

many thanks for your thoughts :)

[A.I.M. - Don't Look Down]

Really cool to find some music made for one of my old favorites! :D I've had that picture bookmarked since I first discovered it, and revisiting it with a new context like this was pretty fun, and interesting... I like the sinking feeling here, how it goes from the green and blue, spacey, mysterious, down to the warmth and wickedness that awaits below... the atmosphere really builds as it drops. I can see the image spanning down, down, as I listen to this. Really digging the beat too, but... somewhere along the line it stalls. Between one and two minutes in it feels like it's almost stuck on the way down, and the dubstep-monster sounds don't feel right. They don't really sound like a monster. It manages the sense of mystery perfectly in the beginning, but seems to have trouble moving from that to something else, and eventually it all just fades away. I loved the first third or so, but the ending... wish it would've gone a different way. I don't feel the fire, darkness or depth of that pit at all.

-cd-

[AIM - Something Evil In The Forest]

It's interesting to read the description as it's such a different interpretation than the one I drew from the piece! Not just the backstory, but also the sense of threat and darkness. The woods seemed, to me, more mysterious than sinister, more forgotten than relevant, yet enter this music and it's suddenly a very living and vivid place, the shadows creeping along the vines, the darkness twisting and fading as the sun moves with the trees, and the leaves rustle in the sinking darkness... it really paints a very ominous setting! Listening to this as I see the image I still don't feel the music in the visuals, but I do love how this plays out. I love the ambience and the sense of suspense, the beats that seem to form steps in the background, the rising, and fading, and creeping motions of the sound... it all builds up perfectly.

Until the point around three minutes it felt perfect, but the break there's a bit long, and silent, compared the brooding before it. After that it really changes, and rises, and goes into a pretty climatic phase before that whispering end... really nice work blending in sounds of nature with the music itself, and the break's really the only part that brings down that setting a bit. Masterful work.

-cd-

FateModified responds:

Hey thanks! I guess I have an overactive imagination sometimes... I saw the way the stones on the ground were arranged into circular patterns and the little wooden strange-shaped crosses and thought maybe it was actually a site where satanic rituals were carried out. I've been watching a lot of supernatural horror movies recently, and so maybe that's why my mind wandered in that direction. Plus, I love the music in horror movies with their dreamlike, creepy, or disturbing ambiences.

Perhaps I should have added something else in the break. I really liked the distant alarm-like wailing sound and in the end decided to let that be the focus during that part, just because of how eerie it sounded to me. What I hear in my music is often way different from what others hear, so it's great to get feedback like this.

Thank you so much for your review, cd. BTW, in case you don't remember, you are the one who first scouted me for the music portal back about 4 and 1/2 years ago when I uploaded my first song to Newgrounds. I was called "HelpThePoor" back then. It's great to hear from you again. :)

[Shanghai Sunrise]

I can definitely imagine that scene. :) Really has an eighties/nineties Asian cinema vibe to it... something like Hard Boiled. Feels like they don't make movies like that anymore but at least someone's making that type of music again! :D I like the ambience, the slow build-up... surprised I missed this thing last year. Really cool tribute. Jazzy, solo plucking, vibrant instruments all floating together in unison...

-cd-

S3C responds:

any more good 90s Kung-Fu flicks? seems like I've seen them all

you've actually heard this before, a year ago before it was published, along with a reel of other stuff ;) Thanks for the second listen and review!