Thanks a lot for your very nice and thorough comment !
I was indeed more under a stricter time pressure this time around (at least compared the OST Comp Jam 07 where I pretty much had nothing to do except working on music) because I worked mainly during the weekends and in the evenings of the week when I got home. However I feel that this album is stronger than the #07 I did even with the fewer time spent, so more time doesn't necessarily equal a hugely better final product for me I guess (having more experience now helps also of course).
I did use this "layering" thing quite a lot on gère now that you remind me of it, I had quite a lot of ideas so taking the time to bring them one at a time for the different instruments made sense for it (and it's pretty nice to have something evolve over time to not be too repetitive I feel). And because of this layering I did run into some issues like you pointed it out, at first the melodies were way louder than the rest but it would have been pretty uncomfortable for the listener to adjust the volume back and forth so I tried to make the volume a bit consistent across the different sound devices (I could have managed this a bit better though, better luck next time).
Anyway glad that you enjoyed it so much, it means a lot !