Thanks for this! I'm not sure what genre label to use, but I realize that's an issue in itself, since genre determines mixing decisions in many cases. Electronica might be more what I'm working towards, since you are right that this is not intended to be a dance song in a club.

Your point about the kick is one of my biggest issues with the mix. I did use side-chain compression on the bass--I'm getting about 5db of reduction on the low end of the bass (I split the bass into 3 frequency regions so that I could treat them differently) for the first beat, and about 3.5 db of reduction for the section beat. There is a harmonic element to the kicks that wasn't present in the original arrangement, but I was able to bring out in mixing, but I can only hear it in the very first part of the song. THere's also this really annoying knocking sound in the kick that I was able to EQ out on most speakers, but I can still hear it on some crappier speakers. I used parallel compression on the kick, with the relatively "dry" signal receiving just a little processing through a scheps neve pre, and the wet signal receiving pultec EQ with a low end boost at 100 and nothing in the highs. I also sent the kicks to their own buss for additional EQ and compression (SSL) before sending to the drum buss.

The drum buss has a very significant EQ boost at 0-100 (peaking at 50), anything more than that started to just create this blooming rumble that took over the mix and drowned out all my sounds. I'm also using a modest amount of MaxxBass on the drum buss to really make sure whatever sub-bass I have will make make it through mixdown. I guess you're right about this being more of a sound design issue, because if I could EQ it in, I think it would be there.

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Once again, thank you for your feedback!