http://www.polydreammusic.com/Young%20Griffo_16.441.01.mp3
Interesting intro, and a good way to get to the vocals quicker. Given that you've opened the can labelled 'filter effects', though, I wonder whether you could actually reuse this idea in some way so that it seems a little less arbitrary.
The chorus kick and snare seem to balance well on my full-range system, but the smaller speakers are suggesting to me that perhaps the kick's midrange attack is a bit too high up the spectrum, because it's coming across as rather clicky, in a way that doesn't quite seem to sit with the snare's timbre. Perhaps you could try shifting that EQ boost down an octave or so and see whether you feel it might give a better match on those systems. It might also just be that the kick makes very little attempt to blend with the rest of the kit in terms of ambience. While this isn't 'wrong' in any absolute sense, because the idea of a dry kick within an ambient kit sound has an enormous number of commercial precedents, it does make the tone of the kick more critical if you want the drum to feel like it belongs in the track. (I'd also tone down the verse kick a little in the HF region too, simply because I think you could get better contrast between the song sections that way.)
The toms seem wider than they ought to be compared with the overheads, so I'd be tempted to toe those in a bit, although I reckon the tone fits in pretty well with the snare. The cymbals are quite strong in the 6kHz region, which reduces the breath-like qualities of the ride (which I rather like) and replaces them with more of a sizzly sound which I found a bit wearing by the time we got to the outro section. A bit more information in the overheads/room below about 2kHz or so would help with this if you share my preferences, and in general would also give the cymbals more weight and gravitas, which I kind of feel they need in this kind of music. (Maybe that's just me, though!
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The bass seems to do a sensible job, even though you've gone for a more understated tone that I'd have instinctively chosen, and small-speaker audibility still seems reasonable. I wonder if the balance of this line could be made a bit more consistent throughout the song by multing (if you haven't already), particularly in the mid-sections -- in mid-section 1 it feels rather lightweight, while in mid-section 2 it woofs a little too much for me, which causes problems with achieving a real impact for the final chorus entry.
As far as guitar sounds go, you've kept the 3-4kHz zone mostly in reserve for the mid-sections, and there's no denying that unleashing it there does make quite an impact. The downside of this approach, however, is that you make the job of delivering the final-chorus pay-off almost impossibly hard for yourself, simply because of the drop-off in this aggressive-sounding frequency region. In general, I've found that the people who've managed that particular section transition most successfully have tended to suggest aggression in the mid-section in a more illusory manner using the 5-6kHz region, thereby keeping 3-4kHz in reserve so that it helps bolster the chorus guitars instead. It's a kind of reverse psychology, I know, and it didn't initially occur to me either until I first heard a mix on this thread actually put it into practice!
While my personal preferences for the verse vocal tend to err on the side of dry/intimate sounds, I did rather like what you've done here in making it rather unnerving and diffuse. Another one of those things that I'd probably have never done in a month of Sundays, but which seems to me to be an equally feasible alternative to the vision I have in my own head. (Always glad to have my horizons broadened!) All I'd suggest in addition to what you've already done is maybe to give it a touch more 1kHz to bring it a little closer, simply because otherwise I think there might be a risk of the guitar stealing too much of the limelight. On a more technical note, the lip noise is also coming too much to the fore in the reintro and second verse, and could usefully be edited/automated out.
When you hit the choruses, I think you could also push the fader up a decibel or so to give the lyrics a bit more projection. However, there's clearly only so far you can go down that road before you start detracting from the perceived size of the backing, and I think it would also be sensible to look at whether you could carve away at a few of the other parts with EQ around 3-4kHz, because the vocals feel quite heavily masked in this area of the spectrum. Careful of the sibilance too, which feels out of balance to me, and perhaps consider tightening up the tuning/timing too, especially since you're using the double-track at a reasonable level. Did you decide against the BVs? It sounds like there'd still be space for them, but maybe they don't appeal as much to you as they do to me.
Your effects use appears to be well-handled for the most part. The only real criticism on that front would be that the lead vocals in the chorus feel a little bit suffocated by their effects, and a bit of predelay could go a long way there, not least because increasing the predelay often allows you to use a lower return level for the same degree of wetness. The overall mix tone seems to favour the 200-500Hz region a bit much, and could also do with a couple of decibels help around 1-2kHz. More of a concern, though, is the mono-compatibility, because your nice expansive stereo panorama is getting wrapped in a blanket in mono. It sounds like there are several phase-cancellation and balance effects operating simultaneously here, so I'm afraid it might take a bit of detective work to sort out, but I reckon it'd be worth the effort.
Overall there's a lot of food for thought in this mix (for me at least!) because you've shown the potential for several lateral tone decisions. Thanks for submitting!
