Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ebullience (Original Mix)]

I got really excited around 30 seconds in when the bass said hi. The melodies are super fun and unexpected. Cool drum fills and background stuffs. I really liked those piano pad melodies. This would be so much fun to remix ^o^

Mich responds:

Bass kicking in is always fun. :3 Thanks for the praise Quarl, and feel free to remix if you want; you can poke me if you'd like some stems exported to play with. :)

[Flow]

This is really relaxing. Works great as a short loop. I'd love to give you better feed back but I'm not well educated in a retro genre like this. Adding a cowbell would take the song out of its decade but I think some more percussion or background noises like that would be cash. imo :)

JDawg00100 responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you like it :D

[Chaos Distortion]

Boots, this sounds like an old calyx & teebee. Anyone that played GTA 3 would recall the MSX channel. This could fit right into that mix. Trivia: the MSX radio channel was a 25 minute cut from a Timecode mix when he was spinning for the Moving Shadow Label. Moving Shadow was a prolific name in dnb back then.

It's interesting the dnb scene was gobbled up by dubstep back in 2005 when top tier names in dnb started deflecting and changing names. People like Spor became Feed Me, Rob Swire ruined Pendulum before becoming Knife party. Then he ruined Knife Party too. Ewun became Kill The Noise, cornandbeans became Spacelaces, and everything else went to hell after that.

People stopped making this sound but imo, it never stopped being edgy and cool. I still bump Moving Shadow mixes sometimes. Long live the groove.

[Evil (instrumental)]

I really liked those drum rhythms at the beginning. Unexpected quick bass kick hits. Reese bass is tight too. Really tight track Ricky. You got a dubstep vibe but with some 16th note hi-hat rhythms and 32nd note fills this could be a Prodigy level break beat.

I'm really impressed with that reese bass. Kids these days write the filthiest basses.

RickyCroci responds:

thanks ;)

[God Uzi]

Happy Pico Day Deshiel! I enjoyed hearing your advanced percussion. Next level beats. Mix was a little crunchy but I usually get peeved when people talk to me about mix quality so I won't do it to you, on this most holy of days. Would hate to get any salt on the pico wafers and wine I'm about to pass around for pico day communion.

DESHIEL responds:

Happy Pico Day to you too Quarl. Sorry for the quality haha. Tried to make it sound enjoyable, guess I was too selfish in that department.

[For A Small World This Place Sure Has Big Problems [LD38]]

Was gonna call you out on the genre but it looks like you took care of that for me in the authors description. Thanks I guess.

Those pitch bent melodies are super fly. The organic sound of simple drum samples gives this track a funk vibe. Turns out electro-funk is a genre. Gank that genre John. Funk is totally an option :D :D :D

johnfn responds:

Heheh. To be honest when I write music I don't think about genres at all. And then NG asks me for a genre and I don't know what to say. WHAT POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURAL STYLE WERE YOU CONTEMPLATING WHEN YOU WROTE THAT SONG? BETTER THINK HARD BECAUSE IF YOU CHOOSE WRONG 100 PEOPLE ARE GONNA SAY THAT A DIFFERENT POSTMODERN ARCHITECTURAL STYLE FITS SLIGHTLY BETTER

I'm glad you like it tho!

[Dewey]

I remember the Lifted forums used to have hour practice competitions where artists would start something from scratch and the deadline was one hour. It's funny how some great stuff can come out under pressure and weird time restrictions sometimes. It's also funny how bad things can get too.

This really took me back actually. Reminded me of a lot of the old stuff we got here from people like Stan-SB and Rawrthaas. I liked that you did something other than that fat punchy snare you hear as a layer in 99% of drum and bass right now. I'm so guilty of it. Fuck, I need to start downloading some Rawrthaas right now. This is total plug:

http://rawrthaas.newgrounds.com/

I'm sure you'll be able to make connections and similarities. Great job Mich.

Mich responds:

I felt like I needed such a restriction after several sessions where I just focussed to hard on a synth and got totally sick of the "melody" I wrote for it, then abandoned it. I was just super glad to put out a track. Defo for from polished though :p

Checking out some of Rawwrthaas' stuff now, I can vaguely see some similarities, though at much higher quality. Thanks for the recommendation. :)

As for the snare, it's probably due to not spending more than 10 minutes selecting appropriate drum samples to work from, otherwise I'm sure I would've landed on something punchier.

Thanks muchos for the review :-)

[Awake the Sleeper]

lol, I sampled a conversation with David Lynch recently. Was something you posted about him so I looked him up and grabbed a snippet interview for "Beautiful Gifts." Where do these vocals come from? You kind of have this "Army of Me" vibe going on here :)

Midimac isn't kidding, old school vibes here. I might have added a shaker rhythm and used a kit with more punch but I wouldn't expect you to open an old sound file. I think about remixing my old tunes every now and then, laugh about it, then drink heavily and cry while thinking about new songs I'm not currently writing instead.

backwardecho responds:

Now I'm curious whether you've heard of Lynch before my mentioning him, and if not then might I highly recommend a viewing of Twin Peaks as well as Eraserhead!^^ Vox are me, can't recall what was in my mind back then but wouldn't be surprised if it involved a big truck and a gorilla dentist somehow. :)

I believe there's as much merit in reimagining an older piece as there is in creating a brand new one, although some songs are better left as they are.

[Crunk Loop (Ft. Lil Jon)]

pro beats

Father-of-Death responds:

YEE DAWG, RESPECT

[Shiver]

lol, nuero is a hard genre to pull off. You did a really good job but might I suggest not relying on that deep skrillex snare everyone defaults to and instead looking for something a little grimier? You could always keep the original snare as a background layer and just raise that thin snare layer you already have a little more? That bass kick might have benefitted from slightly longer release? I'm nit picking, mix is always hard as fuck with nuero but this is pretty damn tight. That reese was nice and dirty :')

Reminded me of the old API & Paragon days. This was actually way cleaner than one of those old nuero tracks. I just went back on Paragon to listen to Airbass and Chaoz Devotion... holy shit has dnb changed since back then. This track puts those sleepy legends to shame. Good job Rav :D :D

Ravitex responds:

Oh wow, didn't expect to get a long review/comment/thing today. Thanks for the feedback! I admit tho, the snare kinda sucked here. The reason why I keep my kicks short tho is because they really mess with my sidechain. I do have some ideas on how to improve that in the future. Anyway just wait a few more days, there's another neuro track coming, just alot better, with more fitting drums.