MINIREVIEW: BIG FISH AUDIO HEAT SEEKERS
Mar 13, 2007 10:09 AM, By Jason Scott Alexander
There was a time when you'd never see "high-quality polish" and "hip-hop library" in the same sentence. Heat Seekers, however, shimmers like a hundred points of ice across a platinum grille. The 4.2 GB DVD (1.85 GB of 24-bit WAV) is arranged into 50 key-referenced construction kits from 70 to 140 bpm. With 721 WAV loops and hits in all, the collection is upbeat and exuberant, as well as a little techno-quirky.
There are influences from rave culture, space rock, tribal ceremony, contemporary ethnic and cut-up orchestral music. Though the traditionally winning combos of orchestra hits, synth stabs, pizzicatos, clavs, plucked guitar and dramatic strings abound here, Heat Seekers is decidedly more electro-infused hip-hop, with wild synth effects and virtual sounds folded into rawer elements borrowed from rock and funk. The creative instrumentation includes pitched log drumming with a voodoo synth lead, huge dive-bombing bass with a guitarlike synth lead against a speed-pitched and reversed 70 bpm rock-drum groove, space-harp glissandos put to a laid-back Prince-type funk groove and so on; though I would add that Heat Seekers leans more heavily to the Southern and exotic-sounding palette than anything else. All kits contain a full mix and elements broken out into individual loops, as well as a folder of hits and another of individual drum tracks. All in all, this disc should set fire to more than one hit track this year.
For more information about Big Fish Audio, visit www.bigfishaudio.com.
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