AMG
May 1, 2001 12:00 PM, Dave Hill Jr.
Are dirty house rhythms your idea of a good time? Or are you searching for a slick, deep beat that goes thump in the night? If you're looking for party grooves that really rock the house, AMG's Seminal House (two CDs — audio and WAV, $99.95) is hard and heavy enough to drive all night.
Filled with more sweet bottom end than a Miami booty contest, Seminal House gives producers a platter full of dark four-on-the-floor beats and more. Grooves range from status quo house to trashy trance vibes, with a few synth samples thrown in for good measure. In all, there are 388 loops, 365 individual drum and percussion hits, and 85 synth sounds. The variety of beat colors and densities provides ample room for originality within the house context.
The first few tracks, including “Fat Pappy” and “Sham Poo,” are straight-ahead house with swampy lows, offbeat hats, and slight variations of occasional percussion. As the disc rolls on, busier patterns with intensified rhythms emerge. “Double Bubble” and “Hardware” offer heavy, authoritative beats at a club-standard 125 bpm, in contrast with “Vodka Acid,” which sounds intentionally thinned out (and is followed appropriately by “Hangover”). Most of the tracks are drum-laden rather than driven by bass lines or synths. The focus on big-sounding drums keeps the sincerity of Seminal House intact as it delivers the well-crafted, foundation-forming thuds and stomps that house remixers and DJs continue to rely on.
Five different tempos (120, 125, 130, 135, and 140 bpm) are used throughout the collection. Grooves are four bars plus a beat in length, repeated two or three times with varied equalization and effects settings; and the synth, drum, and cymbal one-shot samples are laid out clearly. The faster grooves tend to explore higher sonic frequencies, whereas the slower grooves hold down the bottom. Perhaps the Matrix production team believes that as the tempo increases, the need for bottom is less pertinent. Still, these deep, heavy rhythms will delight producers who are in a hurry to fatten a track with an authentic house feel.
I should warn PC users that AMG lives in the land of Macs. Although Mac users will enjoy the benefit of wonderfully descriptive file names, my PC refused to read the WAVs on my copy of Seminal House because the file extension was too long. AMG admits this was a onetime oversight on its end and promises to send any PC user an additional disc with the correctly formatted WAV files — problem solved. WAV files come in handy if you don't want to take the time to sample directly from the audio CD tracks, and they're essential if you're using a hardware sampler such as an Akai S-series model.
Seminal House is like a club catalog, full of beats to entreat. The solidly built grooves have an authentic house feel. The next time you're scrounging up beats for your club jam, sit back, slip in Seminal House, and enjoy the demystification of house groovology.
Overall Rating (out of 5): 4
AMG/East West (distributor);
tel. (800) 969-9449 or (212) 541-7064;
e-mail sales@eastwestsounds.com;
Web www.soundsonline.com
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