Hey Guys! First of all I wanted to thank you all for the great community you have built here!
It is amazing how rich of talent the Sonic Academy community is!
Long story short, I’ve been working on this track… My question is, what comments / observations do you have, and do you HONESTLY believe this track is Promo / Demo ready!!!
Please feel free to praise, criticize, or destroy this track! 
https://soundcloud.com/dj-truewind/forever-original-mix
https://soundcloud.com/dj-truewind/forever-original-mix/s-9Vq79r7UC64
Hey there @truewind1
I’m missing dynamic in two ways in this track : first in the arrangement which sounds very linear to me, those Afro percussion sounds are good but they are not bouncing as they should, they are not really giving the rhythmic feel this track should have IMO. Then second, it’s a mixing issue, you’re loosing dynamic in the mix because the track is overcooked. There’s too much compression going on and the levels are just too loud. It gives a squashed effect to the track and at some point we loose clarity and get into heavy distortion when more subtle saturation will have work better.
If you take a peak time like around 2:20, it really sounds too much harsh & processed and we loose clarity and focus.
You have your low end and a sub taking quite a lot of energy in the track and the other parts are playing with equal energy, missing dynamics here again because of levels balance and compression probably. The very saturated snare sound gets often into heavy distortion territory as well, not sounding that nice and really masking other nice elements in the track.
Nice sounds, great atmosphere layers and good use of vocals which give some dimension and drama to the track but it will really benefit from levels adjustments and more dynamic & groove with percussion and treating that noisy snare IMO. Mixing at lower levels and aiming at clarity first might help to get a better feel of the all mix and balance the different elements better, once you get that at low levels you can then push the track with some compression and limiter. Check your master channel by putting an FFT analyzer such as the free SPAN from Voxengo on it, then have a look at the FFT curve, take a reference track and put it through SPAN as well and compare the FFT curves, that might help to fix mixing issues.