Ef-X's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Double D Boob job]

Madness

no this isn't sparta.

This is a mix of consonant and dissonant sounds (in theory it excels.) The drum and bass pattern was superb imo and the effects were brutal. Great Job. Nice bass only ending. 5/5.

AliceMako responds:

We can still dine in hell though if you like, i hear the seafood's great this time of
year. The consonance/dissonance is actually due to happenstance, it just happened as i went along and you're spot on that it's madness.

(one look at the instrument rack i set up and repetition of tangled wires and
cross connections between audio splitters and effect devices used to replicate
the original synthesizer signals will confirm that)

My only regret is that inspite of all this technical grandeur and a new personal record in amount of devices used it's still a fairly uneventfull tune imo.

Anyhoo, many thanks for your analysis and kind words <3

[nb04 Black and White]

>,> <,<

It feels like you are walking during a rainstorm on an avandoned village and someone is walking behind you. You turn around but you notice no one is there...

I'm curious did you overlap the melody for the arpeggio or did you just put echo on them?

5/5. the heart-beat like drums were sweet in the ending.

Jonah-B responds:

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. That's just a simple delay on the arpeggio.

[Circus in the Sky]

yes...YES!

You must know your shit. Your athmosphere building skills are sick. That guitar and their effects are so sick! and the melodies were amazing (that instrument i cannot name that starts @ 0:25 is what i mean.) You use effects the correct way, none of that show off lots of fade in and outs effect. This feels like it has structure and it does. That one or two second like breaks and the drums kicking in is a technique that fits in with this composition. God damn its sick! who are your influences in music? dude not kidding here you have an amazing composition. 5/5.

Jonah-B responds:

Thanks man! This track is one of my personal favorites. I don't what possessed me when I wrote it, but I wish I could match it. My influences in music? Well, I listen to just about every style. Rock (Led Zeppelin, Yes, Smashing Pumpkins, Elliott Smith), Metal (Tool, The Mars Volta, Deftones), Classical (Mozart, Bach, Liszt), Jazz (Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, and most of all Vince Gauraldi), Electronic (NIN, Crystal Casltes, Aphex Twin, Brian Eno) and thats just the really abreviated list. There are so many great artists out there in every genre. As far as direct influences, I dunno. I often find myself trying to put a Nine Inch Nails feel into some of my darker or more industrial pieces. Eno also directly inspired a few of my songs. Since I generally focus on soundtrack stuff I could probably credit some game music composers like Koji Kondo, Nobou Uematsu, Grant Kirkhope, and others. I also did an album called Looking Out From the Inside that was pretty directly inspired by post rock groups like Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, and Godspeed, aswell as Eno. As for this piece in particular, I really don't know who to credit as inspiration for this. I originally recorded a small part of this when I was around 17 years old. At the time I was obsessed with 90s rock like The Pumpkins, Nirvana, and The Pixies, though I don't really hear a lot of them in this work. About a year ago I ran across that original recording and decided to expand on it. This was the result. I'm real glad you liked it and thanks for the review!

[nb03 Counting the Minutes]

Wild Wild West

You can hear the heart wrenching emotions on this track. It sounds like it could fit on a destroyed landscape type of game and that background melody of the guitar was sick. The drums were structured so sweet. And the voice in the beginning was a nice way to start building up on the emotion. 5/5.

Jonah-B responds:

Thanks man! I'm glad you liked it!

[Über Geek Dub]

O.O

Surely it is trippy. It had a nice beat to walk in style to. I'd imagine a robot walkin with a post apocolyptic landscape behind him. 5/5 simple and fun; nice title too.

AliceMako responds:

Cool, glad you like, i got all that junk out of a single graintable synthesizer and
a randomly generated pattern.

Reminded me of regretting that last hit, bit unstable on the feet, dry mouth, pounding heart, racing mind and the urge to sit down and stay there.

[Spirit Helper (Extended)]

Just imagine this is blank

I see the extension :D! lol. I enjoy'd this one 2. Not much to say the review below 1 up me :( but its great. 5/5.

AliceMako responds:

You've said it all allready, no worries ^_-

I'll take the praise to heart and vow to do even better >:3

( hit and miss ratio is not so great as i'm sure the rest
of my uploads demonstrate )

[Spirit Helper (Pure Drums)]

Aight

I did enjoy the drums. Now i could notice the structure and it is banging, the snare line sounded great and the way it built up and down was great also. It always reminded me of ritual music, crazy trance state music. 5/5

AliceMako responds:

Oh wow, that's awesome cus you just summed up the exact feeling i was trying to ellicit when i worked on this.

Potent stuff i guess x3 anyway, glad you like it.

[Lunar Chaos [Cmdtrigun]]

Oh yes

This chord pattern is my favorite. It is so mellow it feels so weird. the drums are standard but work for the tune. Its a faster song of yours, it shows your style in its early stages. Raw in other words. 5/5.

Cmdtrigun responds:

Yeah I really like the mellowness of this too. In case you were wondering, even though the title is fairly self-explanatory, this reminds me of a spaceship cruising through space and then getting into a dogfight and blowing shit up! :D Glad you liked it.

[Cruisin' Universe [Cmdtrigun]]

pretty concrete

It had a nice synth pattern with athmosphere to the synth chords repeating. The minimalism was there as always. And in fact i started to enjoy it as it got near the end because of the repeating synth changing. but not bad. 4/5.

Cmdtrigun responds:

Thanks, this was one of my first and definitely just a way for me to try out different things and see what works.