AIM 2023 Judge Review

What I really love about this piece is that it manages to capture this sense of being in outer space without sounding desolate or mysterious. Don't get me wrong; there are many space tracks that pull that off, but I feel like every once in a while, it's nice to hear a depiction of space as being beautiful, wondrous and chill. I think this approach was the perfect choice to reflect this image of these lovers looking at a heart-shaped nebula.

There's so much prettiness in the sound design and chord progression. I absolutely love the section from 1:35 to 2:03. The call-and-response with the horns and the strings against those ascending arps is breathtaking, especially with how floaty and pleasant the arps are. The melodies also have a tenderness to them that works really well to portray the romanticness of the art inspiration.

I think there are a couple of sections with the melody that could have used some more phrasing, particularly at 0:41. Since the higher voices are more prominent, giving them more of an arc to their velocity rather than being uniform would help to add some shape and really bring out the emotion in the melody. A similar thing could be said about the piano chords when they first enter - they're a bit on the forceful side in relation to the rest of the accompaniment.

Overall, this is such a well-crafted track in its composition, section flow and the instrument choices. I must say, the melody at 3:26 reminded me of the Adam Young track "Earth" from the Voyager 1 orchestral score and that is what really sold me on the whole lovely spacey vibes. The ending sounds a bit like a logo jingle which is kind of goofy but it's a pleasant enough conclusion.

(disclaimer: AIM judge review here! these are just my opinions and thoughts, you can take from them whatever you like! music is subjective and all that. <3)

i like the progression of moods here... everything flows smoothly and gradually from one related thought to another, and before you know it, you passed five minutes with your lovely astronaut partner. i like your drum sequencing a lot, there's some nice little details and it feels organic.

overall, not a lot stands out to me - the mood is sweet, sentimental and chill, and all the parts are in their right places. maybe some more compression would help the drum beats stand out and brighten up in particular; maybe some stuff on the master like compression, light distortion, or even tape effects could further solidify the trip-hop style, if you wanted to spice up the production. but this is really solid, and those are not complaints but rather thoughts about how it could level up higher.