Hey John, there's much evidence of your hard work here, as always, and the fade in is a really cool idea
You've done justice to a very cool and rather complex song. I was actually thinking the mix sounded a little small in terms of width, until the final section when the vocals come in, and BOOM, in yo face! Good stuff, man
And I actually like the level of the vocals as they stand, personally.
I've stated before that I'm only just now becoming familiar with this genre, so these observations/suggestions should be considered with that in mind and taken, perhaps, with a grain of salt
First thing that I'm noticing is that there's a lot of bass energy in the kick, which is a good thing, but the extra bass seems to be lagging behind the attack a teeny bit, which sort of tugs on the tempo. It could just be that my system has a hard time reproducing that frequency rapidly, or it might be mixing in was the frequencies on the bass synth in an unfavorable way. Unfortunately I'm limited on practical suggestions to fix that (if you feel like it needs fixing anyway)
because I usually use low cuts in those situations. I stole a trick from Mike S. after I bought his book where his has a deep triangle wave synth running the tonic note of the song continuously, but gates it and triggers the gate to open with the kick drum hits... it only works in certain situations and I haven't tried it on this song yet, but it's all I've got :/
Second thing that comes to mind is that the bass could do with some more upper range harmonics. I know it's there because I feel it in my chest, but when the mix gets busy, I can't really lock into it. I think that might be a matter of taste though :/ because I've been criticized (politely) for adding more high end to bass instruments recently.
Lastly, there's a lot of fizzy stuff in the high end on most of the lead synths. This track was the first of the new ones I downloaded because it's a really cool tune and I had so much fun working on Human Mistakes, but I'm struggling hard with getting the treble under control on this tune... I've worked with synthesizers a lot in my own music, they call that harsh quality "exposed" i.e. exposed saw wave, exposed square. Love the sound, but I've never figured out a way to make it work in a mix, even after these last 6 months of hard work and learning. I'm sorta wondering if some sort of reverb could be used to make the brittle parts of the sound more diffuse and smooth? Because high shelving cuts are just pushing them into the background for me... or perhaps that is the sound Skelpolu is looking for? Hard to say, so it's not really a criticism, just an observation I've been struggling with.
I agree with Skelly though, overall a very worthy effort!
