FatKidWitAJetPak's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Honey]

Pop Goes The People Album Review PT 2 *See I Wont Let You Go for PT 1*

Just Let Go

"Just breathe go and just let it go," is exactly what I take away from this sunny track. I felt the track was overpowering towards the end, but I loved it that way. It really brought tears to my eyes. A powerful track with a powerful and easy to understand statement. The ending isâEU¦ just great. Really, it is just great.

Honey

I have been waiting to listen to this track for a while. I heard about it in your news post and I must say, I am already impressed 30 seconds in. It is slower and smoother that any other track in this album, focusing on the details of the acoustical harmony mixed with the isolated lyrics with a hint of insanity. Honey is a metaphor with an interesting idea. It is the name we call the one we love, yet it is also, in this case, a sticky, hard to get off substance that sticks to our mind. I feel like I'm traveling through space in this one, overlooking my problems in a sea of honey. I completely know what it feels like to grow so attached to someone, that you feel like your going insane. This is almost a contradiction to the other tracks, a degrade in progress from the attitude the others give, yet It is also accurate to many of our experiences.

Waiting for Weightlessness

Rich and warm tunes collide together in a magical way, making me feel like I'm floating in this tune. It is very true, we all are waiting, pondering, and hoping for weightlessness from our emotions. We don't want to be hold down by an overwhelming feeling anymore. Sometimes we just want to let go and float gracefully towards the sky, leaving everything behind as if it never existed. I can easily let go of the entire world by this point in the album. The lyrics are a little hard to understand here, but I completely understand what you are going for. The style is very inspiring to not only my musical ideas, but to my long term life feelings as well. I will let go of all the weight.

Hello Alien Sun

This is the only song I don't like in the album because of all the dissonance. It is constantly ringing and sounds combine together in a very chaotic way. It really needs a big clean up, a lowering of the volumes, and a massive subtraction of all the noise. I can barely understand anything that is going on here. Then again, you may have done this on purpose. As a song, I don't very much enjoy it, but I like the possible message of frustration and anger you leave behind. You should re-record this track in my opinion, because there are other ways to represent these darker, alien feelings.

Run & Hide

This is definitely in the same tune as "Staring at Concrete" from Treefella. That was my other favorite song from the Treefella album. I love this one as well. Simple, elegant message with a simple, elegant tune. Well mastered, well put together, but not nescesarilly as interesting as the other tracks on the album. Then again, I still enjoy the sheer minimilism composition in this.

All in all, this entire album is a representation of love, life, and getting over your feelings to better improve yourself as a human being. Ironically enough, the narrator in the album never does get over his feelings. In fact, he progresses down the road of insanity and slowly watches his world tear apart around him. This radiates pure feelings of isolation, sadness, and regret, while at the same time bringing pure happiness, peace, and understatement into my heart. I feel the best of both worlds. It is dark, full of floaty guitar riffs and impactful lyrics that take you into another dimension, yet light, with head bobbing acoustical melodies and wonderful electronic progressions. Everyone should give this album a listen. It is extremely well made, original and conceptual to the artists interpretations and raw emotions drawn out in waveform. Kingbastard, you always touch my heart and shake my brain with amazing, different music specific to your own, slight pushes towards your thoughts on the world. Please, never stop making music, and keep doing what you do!

Kingbastard responds:

epic! Thanks man. I don't personally hear the 'ringing' or dissonance in in Hello Alien Sun, but I guess different ears, different opinions haha.

Much appreciated.

[I Won't Let You Go]

Pop Goes The People Album Review (PT 1) *See Honey for PT 2*

Everytime you release a new album I truly am moved more than I am by any other album I own. I constantly listen to music, since I practically need it while driving. Your style is constantly changing. It is almost as if this is composed completely by different people. I truly am shocked you are able to put everything together so nicely and quickly. Your produce so elegantly with so much emotion. Every pluck of your guitar strings, every melodic synth, and the entire symbolic representation of life in each of our perspectives in the frequent use of pads all come together to truly make a musical experience. I smile when listening to your music, as I do with this album. Your simple lyric style is very addictive, offering a definite replay value, again and again. I find myself replaying your songs, singing along while closing my eyes and shaking my head back and forth to the nice beat. Let's take a moment to break down each song.

Start to Begin

What an intro! I immediately understand the theme of this album when I hear that guitar come in. The less observed perceptions of life are offered in a bright universe portrayed with singing, guitar playing, and light, easy lyrics to tie everything together. You have a great voice, isolating me into my own little world against the chaos of everyday life. I can truly observe a vision of sorts, as if you are taking me out of my seat and showing me the world on a different level. I enjoy the interesting and original electronic additions to this song, along with every other song. I never know what to expect. Excellent mixing, sounds, and composition. I can't wait to see what is next in this little world of yours.

Treefella

Ahh yes, the Treefella EP, a song about wondering and waiting for someone to come join you in your tree. I remember hearing this in your album "Treefella". The entire song is recorded with a lot of headroom, making the lyrics a little hard to understand. I have grown quite fond of that, however, and find myself playing it on long trips across the State. It always offers a happier look on isolation for me. If I'm alone, I feel like I am simply waiting in my tree for someone else to come along and join me in my world. The thing is, being alone in a tree isn't all that bad. You get to overlook the entire world while keeping your head up. I enjoy this song, and it is my favorite on your treefella album.

Birdspotter

I see you have gotten much better in live recordings, improving from the slightly hard to understand Treefella. This song REALLY made me smile. You sure know how to play different styles of guitars! I am very impressed by just how many riffs, acoustic melodies, and electric slides you put in here. You have quite a lot of talent to play all of that and layer it accordingly. If this is ever played live by a few capable guitar players, I would love to hear it! It is the kind of song that makes you want to get up, talk to people, have a bit of fun, and dance till the sun goes down.

C.O.W.A.R.D

This is a touching song full of regret for your own self awareness of flaws, seemingly impossible to change. The pad that comes in after 1:30 is incredible. This kind of electronic buildup and transition is the kind of unexpected, simply wonderful and amazing ingenuity that really makes me open my mouth wide and say "wow". After this, it is almost as if the feeling of acceptance overtakes my body. Its ok to have flaws. Its ok to be you. Ironically enough, this track ends without any show to change the problem. This is what traps the track in time in a artistic and beautiful way.

Kingbastard responds:

Woah, you have been busy;)

[Stratospheric:v2[Nim]]

A very dark orchestration with some interesting twists and unexpected turns. The main thing that bothered me was the off tune notes. After the pause, nothing really seems to go well together. I see you were trying to create an interesting song with an off key theme, which works sometimes, but in this case I don't think it turned out so well. instead, sadly, the melodies seemed to blend in in a chaotic, mish mashed sort of way. Your timing was great and things were brought in just when they should have been, but the actual composition wasn't very enjoyable.

My advice is to focus more on what strange chords go well together. Dont change pace so quickly. Progress slowly, slowly building up with strange, unexpected sounds that go well together. Then, climax to the speed increase instead of slamming it down. Go about things slower and the off tune idea will work well in my opinion. Your mixing is well done and you mastered everything as well, so props for that. Just work on your melodies.

[Cosminox]

Needs more bass and lows.

Im kidding. Lol. Actually, the lows in this are just fine in my opinion. You did a good job at creating a nice depth of field and built everything up towards the one minute mark where the real beat started coming in. AT 1:20, things really started kicking in a more intense buildup. 1:40 was a little too loud for me, I would say turn it down just a hair so it's not too distracting from the climax. The climax is always better when everything leading up to it is just perfect. I loved the dies down at 2:15... wow you are really good at progressing things!

The tune at 2:40 was great. I didn't expect anything that happened to happen. Everything was very interesting and I enjoyed the journey this song took me on. Nice beat pattern going on throughout here. My favorite is at 3:20. The best is a little cluttered after 3:45 for me and the sounds get a little too loud after 4. That lead is too loud at this point until it dies down near 4:30 and the drums start leading the song to the end.

Remember to spend a fair amount of time checking your peaks so your final mix isnt too loud or too soft. All in all I really enjoyed this song! Keep up your good work. :)

[Sinking Island]

I can see this in a flash submission. It almost has a chaotic chiptune feel to it. There is a whole lot of stuff going on right off the bat. You did a good job building it up quickly and stayed at a constant flow. Good job at synchronizing those beats together. I liked how you put everything together in the long run. This would be really nice in a flash submission where an astranaut travels through space, entering and exiting intricate planet systems and star clusters exploring vast alien civilizations and shrinking down to a microscopic level where he rages war with the omebas in his tiny white cell space ship. It would go something like this...

Somewhere above where nothing else lies, a small boy ponders on a moon. Her thinks to himself and wonders about the mysterious darkness that surrounds him and his single bed night light. "Hmm," he thought to himself, "I wonder what sort of amazements lie above and beyond the horizon." He gets out of bed, runs to the other side of his small world, and pulls some small levers on a little brown panel. A light blue rocket ship rises out of the ground and sucks him inside. "Im going to see whats out there". He presses a few numbers on his key pad and the rocket ship blasts off into the abyss. For a few moments, there is nothing but the red and orange trail of his rocket thrusters.

Then, off in the distance, a group of colorful entities comes into view. He adjusts his glasses and peers at the cluster of color. His eyes widen as mass amount of planets and rocks, from gigantic green and red orbs, to small grey and brown mounds of clay, pass his ship in a beautiful dusty cloud of gas. Purple rings, white flickers of light, blocks and spheres and octagons and octahredagons and octopuses and odd things to strange things to weird things to normal things, a ice cream truck, a yo-yo, a man with a guitar smoking a cigar next to a sleeping elephant upon a mound of gold, a dwarf with an axe, a cat on a curtain, a goldfish in a bowl, and many, many more things of all sorts of sizes float all around him and the planets and stars he dreamed of. Oh, what an amazing sorts of things he saw!

This song gives a great visual for a story. I love it. Keep up your good work :)

OpenLight responds:

Thank you! I always try to write my songs with some sort of story behind it, and that story you made up fits very well with this track.

I'm really glad you liked this track, thanks again!

[Supplication]

Woh. Your voice really is beautiful. This reminds me of a 1960s recording of a piano bar where men and women smoke cigarettes and rest from their normally busy lifestyle in downtown New York. Perhaps, in the midst of the crowd, a man with a black hat stares at the dusty brown table he sits at, thinking to himself the troubles of his empty love life. A women at the bar drinks her fourth martini for the night, letting tears fall from her face from memories of her dead husband. A group of guys laugh and smile while playing poker in the corner. Their voices paint the bar among other conversations about busy jobs, jokes on politics and life, and general chit chat of no real importance. All at the same time, the woman singing on the stage truly ties the entire culture together in a beautiful knot. Her voice carries the story of culture until she stops, and the bar turns off its lights as the crowds leave go back to their homes and sleep for another day.

This song had a very nice ring to it. It was slow, sad, and beautiful. It made me smile and reminded me of that classic, old piano bar scene. It reminded me of that certain culture, but in a more artsy way where time just seems to stop and the only thing that exists are these people in this building. It was very pretty. You should keep singing and playing the piano. You have real musical talent and I have no idea how you recorded all that. I am terrible at recording piano and I am trying my BEST this week to actually get a good recording... I hope I succeed as well as you did lol. I have like, four songs to record haha.

This really is raw beauty at its finest. Really well done. Keep up your work please and never stop!

Troisnyx responds:

Admittedly, the piano here was sequenced too, but if I were to replicate the piano here live, I could. I do lament the fact that it was sequenced, but I'll have to wait a while before I can do something about this. So to compensate, I try my hardest to humanise the piano track on FL Studio as if I was playing it. SkyeWintrest taught me a few things to tweak around with the vocals after giving his judgement, so that helps too. : )

I'm glad it did remind you of that scene... Both my parents loved good oldies. I just hope that the next NGADM submission actually reflects this in some way, shape or form.

Thanks a bunch for the review! x

[-conclusion-]

I have always enjoyed your unique intros. They have a nice harmony build, leaded with a well made and fitting happycore beat. The only thing I don't enjoy is that it's very sudden. I would like to see a progression into the style you have developed over these past few years. You use a lot of great instruments. I have a feeling they are preset instruments, since this song was made in 8 hours, but nevertheless, you sure know how to play them right!

Your breakdown into something darker after 2 minutes is a nice touch. I like the variety in this. Great transitions. Your good at orchestration work. Yet again, the only thing I don't really like all that much is that this track stays loud. It never really dies down. I would say add a nice, longer, slower, and quiter intro, then add a downtime with some chillout and engulfing sounds to take the listener on a whole nother' journey. Improvement is really needed in this category. Have some fun learning how to expand your ideas instead of hitting a hard style the entire time.

[Midnight Lights {7x}]

Hey man! I am going through all the NGADM entries and reviewing them for myself. This site has a lot of talent on it and I thought you would enjoy another review that could possibly help you improve. Anyway, I really thought this review was mastered very well. All of them sounds were crisp, creamy, and smooth. The instrumentation chosen was a great idea and matched the flow very well. Your use of filtering was carried out great in most areas. I thought you should have experimented more so in the bitcrushing and phasing categories, however, to help spicen up your sounds.

It's always good to expand your horizens and broadened your talents with different sounds. It is what keeps a song interesting and moving right along. Most dubstep / drum n bass tracks I hear on here tend to stay at one idea and continue throughout that idea, using the hell out of it. Instead of having one idea on there, try to incorporate multiple ideas at once. The thing is with drum n bass... is that EVERYONE uses that same fucking beat. Try edging up that beat and changing it into something new... glitch it out, go into a different beat form, and bring it back. Put some originality into it.

All in all, youve got a nice, solid, generic, well mixed track that is enjoyable to listen to. I would recommend trying to veer off into another direction, giving the whole drum n bass song your very own style. Experiment a bit and see what sort of awesome sounds you end up producing. Generic is fun, sure, but originality is really what brings "holy fuck thats awesome" into a song.

[==(Whatever)==]

God damn. What did I just walk into. Surfing the clouds on a seagull, thats what. That's not even a complete sentence. I don't care though. Cause Im chill as fuck up in here. I love the rich, warm sounds you got from that organ synth. The guitars are, as usual, perfect in every way I could imagine. Im not sure how you do it man, but your ability to learn styles and cover them with your own spice of orgasmic chillout euphoria is as amazing as I am at making pie. Im fucking FANTASTIC at making pie. Maybe one of these days we should combine our pie and guitar skills together to make a fucking pie song about surfing the waves of space on a pie mothership to discover new planets where we fuck all the alien space bitches on our pie spaceship in space. I love how this progresses. I see youve been looking up on your progressive theor--- I mean what the hells theory.

The only recommendation I would say is watch your peaks. Try using a little more compression next time to get rid of that occasional adrupting ringing sound. Keep up your good work.

[Titanium (Chip Mix)]

I see your getting into the chiptune phase. Thats really great, because I was actually thinking of doing that, but on a much more "emotional" level with "emotional" ambient music trying to represent all the "emotion" in the world. Oh goody. Lol, well I never really knew where to start. Youve seem to got this down. I need to check out your newest album man. I may ask you for tips later so I can try and incorporate chiptune theme on a much chiller level, as if it was coming from a distant land somewhere next to a guitar playing man traveling through the desert. ;)