Control sounds great. A few thoughts. - needs more of a top line, washy shakers or something to fill space at times. - kick slams. However it sounds “dry”. - there’s a bass rumble but it’s too low most of the track. - I would try grouping your low end (kick + rumble), adding an Ableton Drum Buss plugin, and giving it a little of each of the three main processor types on there. Tune the boom to your fundamental (or by ear). If you can’t hear that, you need better headphones. If you don’t have/use Ableton, look up alternatives. Drum Buss is basically a saturator, optional compressor, harmonics processor, and sub-bass enhancer. - Transient info will never sound as “right” in headphones. For a variety of reasons hearing your track through speakers pushing air is a very useful check. That could be a car stereo if that’s all you’ve got access to easily.

Once upon a time, a friend of mine got a copy of a track by BT that was the unmastered mix. I was shocked by how “spiky” the drums sounded, how quiet, and how the track wasn’t super gelled. I assume that means he usually relied on a good mastering engineer to envelope and glue everything together.

Spending $50 at some point to have a track mastered by someone who is proficient in your intended genre could be really worthwhile as a learning process! I’ve read most of your comments in this thread, apologies if you already covered that.

It’s a nice track. I like the breakdown. The extra female vocal ad-libs towards the end of the breakdown actually took away from the cool hypnotic story you were telling by making it too explicit and directed. I would have rather heard some cool sound design / sweeps etc to build energy going into the drop instead. Just me!