Review of: Mo-Anine

Strange little track, this. I say little; at 7:21 it's not exactly a short tune, so how does it fare in keeping the listener's attention for that long?

Well, not too well in my opinion. It suffers from technical weaknesses from the very beginning. The drums are so weak, the hats so trebly, and the breaks so clumsily programmed, that they are barely listenable at any point, and are in fact quite ... More irritating. But that's nothing; when the track full develops, the drums are forgiven for their annoyance, as the bassline is way more aggravating. I'm sorry to say, but it's a terrible bassline. There's no other way to put it. And, like the drums, it's poorly mixed so that it lacks any of the low end it needs to have presence, and ends up dominating the high frequencies where it plays havoc with your ears and has you reaching for the treble dial.

The rest of the track is made up of some slightly oddly paired instruments, such as a piano chord which fades in and out, some kind of midi rhodes note that dances about trying to play a melody, and various other samples that sound like they came from a Commodore 64. It all ends up sounding like a tracker tune from circa 1993. In that arena this would probably have been quite good, but compared to the modern standards it just doesn't cut it.

Which is a shame, because there are some intriguing ideas in here. The bassline, while terrible, does underpin a central chord structure which could be very catchy if everything wasn't trying its damnedest to be annoying to your ears. Structurally it's not bad, though it could do with some variation here and there, especially at over 7 minutes. So there's definitely some promise here, but the artist has a lot more improving to do before he can expect to reach the higher end of the ratings scale.