Splagawaga's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Remission_Warder]

tabletable

quite a chuckley bright intro. reminds me of a nursey rhyme. then, haha, a tabla. nice contrast. the big breakbeat ties it all up very well. altho it could perhaps do with a strong musical element to bring drift around over the top of the percussion to give it a setting and a home. still, excellent stuff.

LJCoffee responds:

Yeah a little something extra added might help bring it together a bit more. Maybe I'll do something with it - I have so many versions of this on my drive...

[There's some Soup in my Fly]

onemanband

nice jam track. interesting and foreign noises, the guitar sounds funky as hell. sounds like a one man band with a drum machine stuck inside a low pass filter on the tube....woootwooot nice one

LJCoffee responds:

Thanks - Lots of strecthing and pulling here - alot of relatively average samples that I processed to hell and back.

[experimental - 3/4 HH]

hihi

broody ambience to this track. the trickles on the string part work really nice and stands out on this track. i guess its ripe for a vocal. other than that it makes for a nice loop :)

LJCoffee responds:

Broody... nice adjective for this.

Yeah a longer version with some vocals would be very cool... I think someone had compared this to some of Bjork's work... I'm not sure that I'd want her to do the vox though :)

[Despair in F minor]

blarg

interesting to hear a live sequenced track. not often u hear that. the chord changes are diverse and dark. the drums that come in part way through complete this nicely.

LJCoffee responds:

Yeah - which is half the reason why the tempo is so much lower.. Just really tough do anything live.. for me at least - maybe because I suck in so many differnt ways heh. There's much more to it as well but not for this response - I'll just say that it was cathartic in a way - I had alot going on at the time.

[Gentle Rage]

low fye

nice plain synth melody line during the intro. the background ambience contrasts it nicely. ooooo crunchy as hell drums coming in now. juicey distortion, that snare sounds like its struggling :)
really broken and distorted, works very nicely with the ambient background wash.

LJCoffee responds:

This is another one of my favorites - and this too has an animation planned - it involves a killer space robot and lots of explosions.

Many have commented that the distortion was a bit over the top but I like it - I don't think that I pushed anything too far... I may be wrong though.

[Sad Little Detune:WIP]

sdfdsf

an interesting change from your other previous tracks. it didnt do particularly much but it was all round good anyway. the flanged drums sounded excellent. nice subtle touch.

LJCoffee responds:

Thanks - this isn't one that I pay much attention to really - Once again - this was in response to the bitching about the lack of loops on NG...

On it's own it's not too bad I suppose but I really can't imagine the song that something like this would have been pulled from ya know?

[Those Soulful Chinese]

chinee

very slyly done indeed. a nice blend of the 2 cultures, as though u had snuck your PC into a temple and played along to some scene from crouching tiger / hero. slick work getting the drums and 'guitar' part sync'd up seemlessly. no evidence of cutting and slicing at all. also liked the bongo-esque part that came in towards the 2nd section. smooth motherf*cker :)

LJCoffee responds:

I loved this one - it was fun - It works both ways - So many asians are enamoured by the western hip-hop culture and so many ghetto-ass mo-fo's just can't get enough of the really shitty dubbed chinese movies - :D

I was trying to do my part to bring the two together.

:D

[Techno-Loop Aportal submission]

tek NO

techno with a coffee twist. certainly not the usual god awful trancey i try so hard to avoid. simple and nice loop.

LJCoffee responds:

I hear ya - I have a distaste for the sugar-coated trancy-flakes myself.

[DownTempo Étranger]

boards?

nice a-tonal synthline bobbing along, and the beat is nice and solid. ive got a feeling my sound system is about 10x too bassy cos this track filled my entire room with a sea of Hz. smooth flow, good work.

LJCoffee responds:

A sea of Hz... nice :)

It's probably not your system - it's probably a less than wonderful mix - There's probably just way too much on the low end that I didn't catch or try to correct.

Meh - whatcha gonna do right?

[Still Under the influence]

windy

still under the influence of what? mother's acid?

i like the intro bass, with windchime style plinks and plonks. massive atmosphere to this one, the drums keep it moving along nicely as things start too fill up. the ambience is perhaps a little too non-descript. it didnt seem to go anywhere. production tight as ever though :)

LJCoffee responds:

heh... Still under the influence of... well - by now I'm sure that you've heard "under the influence" and this is just a remix... I'm not sure that it's any better - just differnet.

I've noticed that a common criticism - from you at least - is that it doesn't go anywhere or that it seems to lack direction.

This is absolutely true in most cases - I guess a lot of this is sort of a slice of a state of mind kind of thing...

Part of the reason why, I think, is that I rarely start on a piece with a destination in mind - I usually sort of add as I go and end up with the results... I'm sure that if I sat down and made a few decisions about a track before I started then it might work a little better - at least as far as the structure and direction are concerned...

- No biggie - just another thing to keep in mind I suppose.

Thanks!