Kwing's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[CLAB - Prometheus vs Axtekk]

Prometheus V1 - A couple really light punches here, and a lot of nonsense. The black Justin Bieber? Some good flow and swagging.

AxTekk V1 - Ax sounds a little wet behind the ears here. His vocals aren't the clearest, but he's pretty consistent with rebuttals and punches more consistently (pop filter and a noise gate.) The biggest issue is that his sentences get crammed together enough that it's not always clear what he's saying, or what the immediate relevance is between his punch and Prometheus.

Prometheus V2 - After Ax's verse, the slow and relaxed flow ends up posturing him quite well, and this really puts weight behind him dissing Ax's lack of clarity.

AxTekk V2 - Ax comes back hard with his flow. Not sure what changed between his first and second verses but the sheer aggression and improved clarity make this verse stand out a lot. There are some real punches here, too (Big Bang Theory.)

This is a hard battle to judge. Prometheus sounds more comfortable and consistent, whereas Ax punches harder but his first verse brought him down a lot. Prometheus rapped better, Ax battled better. I give Ax the win, but I do wish he'd come a bit stronger.

[KaosCypher -instr-]

Damn, this is cold. Can't believe I haven't reviewed this yet. There's definitely some war-spawn influence here, but the synths are 100% AxTekk goodness. Lots of variety and very moody.

[Custom Motions (instrumental)]

Too funky. The percussion here is creative but flows so damned well.

[Greasy Shakedown]

Man this is good. Sounds a bit like a War-Spawn beat. Cutting the treble on the drums was a great move, as it makes the whole thing much sludgier and goes with the melancholy of the cello.

[the next tiesto]

I've come to associate you with fast, upbeat tunes, but the intro to this track is surprisingly subtle, and I'm really impressed you were able to do that with default samples, too. Sounds almost like something out of a Worms game.

bryce responds:

not sure what gave you that idea, just listen to my 'lape polaris' (418155) or 'circular shift left' (815778), both got kinda subtly intros. :)

[He Is Risen (Libby Shimmz Remix)]

What to say about this? The beat choice is really great - quite different from the first verse I heard (presumably with the original beat) and yet Ogle's fast-paced delivery seems to work with the beat despite them being quite different.

The acapella itself is strong. The flow is varied and creative, the rhyme schemes are intricate, and Hamsa actually does triplets RIGHT - incorporating them sporadically without allowing them to turn the whole track into stock trap rapper flow. At a few points the fast flow outpaces the beat and becomes slightly off-tempo, but it's not enough to seriously impact the song.

The scratching starting at 2:30 is such a breath of fresh air. That said, with the repetition and catchiness of the line, it might have made sense to mix it in somewhere in the middle of the song too (1/3 to 1/2 of the way through the track) to make the whole track feel a little more cohesive.

Aside from a few nitpicks (occasionally off-beat, AutoTune at 1:20 is somewhat jarring) this is really fantastic.

libbyshimmz responds:

The acapella was hard to beatmatch. That's something I'm not really adept at yet.

That AutoTune was from Hamsa. I was going to ask him why it was there, but it's probably a stylistic choice on his part, so I relented.

[Lost Without You]

Such an authentic 90s sound here. You call this lofi, but it shares very little in common with the "slow it down, mute the highs and add static" trend of modern lofi. Great bass, very catchy.

[-mao- 'I Dunno' prod by BoJangles]

Your flow has always sounded super weird to me, but you sound surprisingly comfortable here. Whether intentional or not, there are a lot of oldschool Korn vibes going on here.

Some nitpicks - you mumble a little on the bridge, and when you use multisyllable rhymes you sometimes rhyme them with a different rhythm, which is a little jarring and keeps the line from making intuitive sense to the listener.

MaoDaMighty responds:

Much appreciated feedback Kev. I have been consciously trying to work on relaxing my flow so I'm glad you noticed.

[Gone I]

I'm really impressed by how smooth you sound here. You sound so much more comfortable than you have on your older tracks. I would suggest switching up the inflection on repeated phrases - repetitions of "and then she was gone" sound kind of robotic and monotone. There are a few things you could do to fix that. The first thing that comes to mind is saying it monotone three times, then changing pitch on the fourth repetition.

supafreshpjs responds:

Thanks I’ll definitely try that and see what else I can do for the track. I swear it’s the new set up that makes it all sound better and smoother, and I guess I’m learning more about mixing still slowly as I go. :) thank you for the review big dog.

[Harder Than Ever feat. MadFlex]

Forgot how much energy was in this song. A few metaphors feel kind of basic, but the overall production value and flow are really the dominant factor here. Both of you fit the beat perfectly.