Nice nice nice
OK - let's see... why the nines?
For Clarity, there seemed to be just a hair of clipping/distortion when the ... shakuhachi? hit. - Maybe it's the highs of that sample combined with the reverb on top of the rest of the music, not sure. Effort lost a point - you should think about chopping up the beats a bit more - It's alright to use bank loops but you should toy around with the rex files a bit. Unless that wasn't a .rex in which case I apologize. - I know a few easy tricks to mix it up a bit - we'll talk more about that via email or PM though.
Overall it's about a 9. I think that the overall score dropped a bit because of the key... I know that it's so subjective but generally I like tracks with more dissonance. I might be a big trance fan if it weren't for all of the happy sugar-pop major keys. This piece had a very upbeat and happy feel to it which sort of makes me uncomfortable I suppose. Like I said - it's all so subjective...
I'm still voting 5 on it because you did a great job on it and it's WWAAAAYYY better than most tracks that are submitted here.