About the review

Title: Sweet things
Listen online: 
 
 download add to playlist
Artist: andreasviklund
Genre: Electronica: Euro
Reviewed by: Spectra on October 17, 2007 (All reviews by Spectra)

Review Feedback: 
andreasviklund gave Spectra positive feedback for this review.

Agree		 
Disagree

Review

 Agree with this review?  
Have an opinion and want to be known for it? Share your opinion directly with the musican and start earning your Reviewer Reputation by reviewing this song.


1Overall Description
Very fun Vengaboys-style song yet with the kind of 7-chord plus progressions and deep chords and playful melodies you'd expect from TSEC/Lagoona.

Yes, it's a rather demostyle vs. pro-trance...but it's also one of those rare songs with enough moody variation in it that (unlike 95% of pro-trance) it gets better with every listen.
 
2Creativity Description
Ok, you might be surprised I'd give a song that has "bubble gum euro-pop" under-lyings this rating...but the fact is this is a superb example of smoothly applied variation in dance music (better, dare I admit, than many Lagoona tracks).

At the beginning (:12) the bassline, acid-lead, and then the "bubbly" lead synth all take their own rhythms giving a pleasing polyrhythmic, synchronized feel. Then at 1:10 there's a subtle, but total mood change until 1:25 that also acts as a transition. 2:37-2:52 sends yet another mood change...amazingly through some of these parts you can never quite tell what's coming up next but can follow it very easily. At 3:27 yet another, more relaxed background layer comes in...the depth of layers playing different melodies is simply breathtaking, almost more typical of a soundtrack composer than a dance musician.

I just hope when Andreas starts his 2008 work he adds some of the personality and sense of freedom he shows in this song.
 
3Artistic License Description
Even more so than Lagoona tracks "Your Paradise" and "The Journey" (which have less sense of variation and freedom, although more power and polish) this track manages to pull through using shining artistic personality instead of brute force production or melodic hooks.
 
4Arrangement Description
Yes, it's demo-style instrumentation and some people are going to hate this song just because of that...but the fact is, much like in Nightbeat's tunes, this song has a bunch of little instruments working together in an almost symphonic fashion toward a much larger sound.
 
5Sound Quality Description
Continuing from my section about arrangement...it's very good but not perfect.
If the song were be remade, perhaps in an effort to keep the original feel, I'd say adding chorus, detune, multi-tap echo delay, and other effects on existing samples could give it that pro-trance power without compromising the demo-style playfulness of the vibe.
 
6Does it work as a piece of music Description
This is a profound example of how personality and mood variations can take an otherwise un-assuming bubble-gum-pop-ish demo-style song and make it into something with in many ways almost soundtrack-like depth and last-ability. Like TSEC's "Dreams 2" this sounds fresh even 10 years or so after the fact.
 
Comments

There are no comments yet. Be the first person to comment.