Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[It's Not Your Fault They Hurt You]

You can always shoehorn this into glitch-hop/IDM but we're given such limited genre tags on Newgrounds. I used to throw songs into "ska" and "bluegrass" out of frustration. Haven't done it in years but you should be safe in hip-hop. The dnb kids would probably get down to this as well, that's a very diverse genre to belong to. DNB artists have eclectic taste... join us midnights. Make your own sub genre of IDM, call it hiphop-step. You have my support and well wishes. HIPHOP-STEP HYPE.

Edit: I completely forgot to say how much I love this track <3

Midnights-Ocean responds:

I really wish the music genre boxes would get an overhaul here. I mean it's all technically breakbeat right? heh. Though you are probably right about the crowd, when I think of D&B I think of faster more busy beats with loads of pitched snares, which I love btw. With this one being more slow I figured, hiphop maybe sorda? lol

Thanks! I kinda have that bad habit of creating new hybrid genres when I make music. I love when music surprises me with fresh combinations. I'm so glad you like it. ^_^

[Path Of The Forgotten]

This sounds beautiful Casper, no surprise there. Instruments are awesome, I love that percussive melody. The sound effects are pro and gorgeous. IMO, track is perfect. I feel like 100% of the tracks you put out are quality. Prove me wrong, I dare you.

Casper responds:

Thanks, I've been having a hard time producing this month, made a lot of WIPs that I am not likely to come back to. I was listening to some of my older songs that I have uploaded on newgrounds and i feel like I rely way more on my tools and samples now. As for the track being perfect, I think the drums could have been cleaner lol. I pitched the original loop down like 6 semitones and tried compressing and cleaning it as much as i could, also has a tiny bit of reverb decay so it wouldn't end suddenly but I guess the crash fixed that anyway.

[loser]

I'm gonna slip this into the ol' love making playlist. It will sit alongside songs like "Leave the Door Open" by Silk Sonic, "Fuck You Like Animal" by NIN and "Rollercoaster Of Love" by Red Hot Chili Peppers. I hope you're excited to share a playlist with these music legends, you're going up in the world Vurb.

Hella fun dance track. Creative melodies, awesome use of samples. As someone that often uses dnb switch ups I was genuinely happy to hear one in this. Totally unexpected, those kinds of tempo switches usually feature some kind of synth riser or a slow noticable automation change to the BPM. I love how that spastic break just hits out of nowhere. 10/10 dear.

vurb responds:

thanks mom

[You're so Cute]

Oof, loved this. Loved everything about it, pro take. Hella nice leads, the super saw pad playing the chord progressions was surprisingly strong and shared it's space with the lead elements creatively. The arrangement is full, good use of your stereo field, but it's not crowded at all. Everything has purpose. The groove is very real, surprising syncopation from everything "melodic" but the track still keeps that obvious 4/4 EDM pulse. Samples are all energetic, I think I've found a new favorite song. Great stuff Softable :)

softable responds:

OMG you are so kind...... really you made my day. Thank you so much!!!

[The Rains Have Ceased, And We Have Been Graced With Another Beautiful Day. But You Are Not Here To S]

I love uselessly long song titles. I still don't know the full title, even tried viewing it from your profile page. Still cuts off the full title. Priceless, don't change it. I like to include long song titles in the author's comments when this kind of thing happens but it always feels like a small defeat.

Love this Indy rock sound, hope to get something nice like this one day. Percussionist, my fiance just got a guitar and bass for the studio. Gotta train him to love stuff like this so we can jam as a team. This has that Explosions In The Sky waltz crescendo structure going on. Loved these climaxes. These guitar licks are so piff. Amazing music Bulrog!

popolamusic responds:

The full title is "The Rains Have Ceased And We Have Been Graced With Another Beautiful Day. But You Are Not Here To See It." Empire Empire song titles are usually very long video game quotes so I wanted to keep the theme going. And big Explosions in the Sky fan, so thank you!

[Peace]

This music is wonderful. We're watching the news in Colorado. I respect your outward display of optimism for peace. Here's hoping for the best in a totally unprovoked war. Uncontroversial opinion right now: fuck Putin. I'm so sorry for you.

Thank you for sharing this, the instruments are very gentle and soothing. It's actually so moving I started crying but then that crash cymbal at 00:41 made me smile and laugh. Broke the spell a little. I associate cymbals to fall on certain beats, I play the drums. It's probably a bias. I'd have sooner expected a soft cymbal swell or some kettle drums, but I like getting taken by surprise. The best word I can call that crash is "distracting" but I think that the act of smiling and laughing still means I enjoyed myself. Thank you.

edit, damn I wasn't finished. Since I dissed that crash a little, I will say that I very deeply enjoyed that brief toy piano/drum kit jam. The whole track is so lovely.

Couplex responds:

Thanks for the nice words. The whole essence of this composition is divided into 2 parts, the first piano (slowly sad, and bells - fast and fun)

[Different Story]

Clean, smooth, relaxing. You got such nice style Casper. One of these days I'll have to download some lofi tone generators and make some white noise. I love how the distortion caused from playing a record has become an entire genre despite that being literally the worst aspect of vinyl records. What was once an annoyance from over-playing your favorite records is now a romantic fizzle that belongs to hip hop at large.

Sorry I don't follow rap/hip hop, are there contemporary acts that are really dipping into the lofi sound? Honestly, if I called myself a rapper in this day and age yet never touched a lofi track I'd probably hate myself D:

Casper responds:

Thanks for the review:)
I've noticed that in the hip hop industry even lofi beats lean more towards trap. I know cymatics have this problem with some of their drumkits, the snares sound like low-ish quality trap snares which doesn't make them lo-fi (i have about ~50 gigs of drumkit so I'd know lmao). Even the sad guitars I hear in a lot of tracks can be made into regular trap beats if you take away the detune and the various fx, without having that big of an impact to the overall song in my opinion. I remember in 2015 when ChilledCow (now the infamous LofiGirl YT channel/music label) started making the 24/7 livestreams and heavily popularized the genre. Nowdays It's hard to distinguish between what it was supposed to be and what it is now since It's so oversatured and a mix of other genres that now include vinyl crackle and tape saturation and labeling it as "lofi". It's something I struggle with since I do want to have my own style of it but can't help but feel that there's no use in even trying when the competition is 500 times bigger. Whenever I scroll through artist's news or on hip hop subreddits it's discouraging seeing all the new albums and new releases while my interpretation of this genre is in no way unique and sometimes I wonder if what i do is too effortless and too simple. Lol, kinda deviated from the topic there. I guess rappers hop on lofi beats because that's what the cool kids listen to these days and it's really easy to make in most cases, with free plugins being very high quality.

[Sailing Okeanos]

Gorgeous orchestrations, strings hella dank, perc nice and full. Electric guitar? Damn. I will be totally frank with you, the synth was the weakest thing but please forgive me for nit-picking that? I'm a little dubstep, you're a little baroque. We have our differences but I still love and respect you. This is such an amazingly strong piece. I could never get orchestral sounds and harmonies to work together this cleanly <3

That high buzzing arpeggio might have been too much stimulus? In your shoes I might have patched something much deeper, just a general tone. A bright synth like this might have decent bass textures you can bring forward with a distortion unit, an EQ, and a filter. With automation lanes on the filter's Freq & Res knobs, a very simple low tone saw synth can do so much more.

I'm so flipping biased. I guess another way of putting it would be that you can program a synth to sound like anything. An arpeggio like this sounds like an arp, I KNOW YOU, YOU WOULD NEVER BLEMISH YOUR HANDS BY PROGRAMMING AN ARP but it's totally ok if you do because those arp machines create classic retro video game sounds and other neat tones that are valuable. I'm so saturated on EDM at this point, a simple saw just doesn't blow me away.

The only reason I say all of this is because your one of my favorite composers here, and hearing some juicy synth work in your music would literally kill me. I would die. I would die six times.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Wow, thanks you for leaving such a long review!

I totally agree. It's a bit of an old song, and I didn't spend enough time making it. The later half of the song is most certainly more lazy than the intro, and it's also simple, yet the mixing isn't very good. It does have the right energy more or less, but there's just such a lack of finish on the details.

I hope you're doing well :)
I'm looking forward to when I have the time to make some new stuff for NG, or upload pieces from some of the projects I've worked on :D

I have a few other oldies to put up first though ;)

[In2 U]

Damn clean beatbox recording, sample or home made? Mixing that with the pop vibes are really inspired. Super clean, love this <3

BurningSexuality responds:

Sample, and thanks yo. Glad you like it.

[Jamuary 2nd 2022 - "Eden"]

Sounds are hella fresh, love hearing birds in music. There is a fun music conversation that revolves around how birds of different regions may have influenced tonality in human music and vice versa. Regardless of it's origins I love hearing birds make their way into music.

I'm glad I stopped in on this page to really listen to the full six minutes. I actually let it loop for a while. Love the perc, bass is nice and lush, pads are well done, chords inspired. Honestly, this track has a lot of love on it. As someone that builds stupid big drum kits, I love hearing people take a more gentle avenue. Always loved smashing my drum kits, it took me so long to learn how to drum with sensitivity. I got a lot of respect for percussion that vibes as well as this.

Just when I'm about to compliment something another wonderful element get's added to the funk. This is really inspired, I love it Vodou <3

TheVodouQueen responds:

Tysm!!! Glad you really enjoyed it! :3 ♡