ONE-SHOTS
Sep 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Jason Scott Alexander
BIG FISH AUDIO ELECTRO MAGNETIC PULSE
LOOPS AND EFFECTS
Having to pry myself away from my DAW and this collection to write this review, I can attest that Big Fish Audio has one severely devastating-sounding library on its hands with Electro Magnetic Pulse. With top-notch sound design and wide, punchy production by Perry Geyer and Pirahna, EMP packs some of the freshest, hardest, most menacing-sounding beats and effects that I've heard onto a three-disc audio, WAV and REX set. Geared toward hard electro, big beat, nu-skool and mad house, the material is almost uniformly four-on-the-floor, rarely with any heavy swings or funk patterns to take away from your flow. The breaks are arranged into 79 thematic families of four-bar loops that evolve into three or four complementing four-bar variations, often with breakdowns and builds. Loops are skippy, glitchy, stuttery, flanged, phased, distorted, vocoded, swirled, erratically auto-panned, tweazy, nasal, mechanical, sci-fi, industrial, tiny, enormous — you get the picture. Tempos range from 68 to 146 bpm, with the vast majority sitting around the 110 to 130 bpm comfort zone. I could hear so many familiar, tasty elements of acts that I love, it made me feel like I was raiding the sound lockers of Beastie Boys, Meat Beat Manifesto, Leftfield, Groove Armada, the Crystal Method, Nine Inch Nails and the like.
Product Summary
BIG FISH AUDIO
ELECTRO MAGNETIC PULSE > $99.95
At a glance: Insanely creative, original-sounding breakbeat and percussion build elements. Three-CD audio, WAV, REX set.
Contact: tel. (800) 717-3474; e-mail info@bigfishaudio.com; Web www.bigfishaudio.com
BEST SERVICE FUTURE TRANCE ANTHEMS
LOOPS AND CONSTRUCTION KITS
During the past 14 years, Gez Dewar and Nick Hale have produced and remixed for the likes of Paul van Dyk, Carl Cox, Robbie Williams, BT and Chicane, to name but a few. Their specialty: cutting-edge trance and progressive. This four-disc package is a purposely redundant two-disc, multiformat set; the first two discs are audio-CD versions of what resides on the latter two, which comprise Acidized WAV files of drum and loop elements arranged in categories and construction kits. There's also a bonus folder containing Logic EXS24 sampler instruments (leads, pads, basses and so forth) of sounds used to create the music loops, which were drawn from synths such as the Access Virus, the Roland JV-1080 and the Clavia Nord Lead. All loops are sample-accurate to 140 bpm across the board. In the music loops folder are 38 arpeggios, 97 bass loops, 39 dub loops, 79 supporting riffs and 30 trance riffs. FTA is a wide-variety goldmine of deliciously heady, booty-shaking, mind-altering, dancefloor-packing substances that really should come with a self-addressed, stamped envelope for you to put royalty checks in, direct to the boys. It's that damn good.
Product Summary
BEST SERVICE (DIST. BY EAST WEST/SOUNDS ONLINE)
FUTURE TRANCE ANTHEMS > $99.95
At a glance: Two-CD set of high-energy trance loops and construction kits in audio, WAV, EXS24.
Contact: tel. (800) 833-8339; e-mail info@soundsonline.com; Web www.soundsonline.com
ZERO-G PLANET OF THE BREAKS: THE SERIES
REASON REFILL
Late-drummer jokes aside, you know just how cool a live rhythm can be in an electronic production. No other breakbeat series in the history of sampling CDs has garnered quite the critical acclaim on every single outing that Zero-G's Planet of the Breaks quartet has. More than 850 MB in total, this collection expertly compresses all four Planet volumes — some 2,000 samples — into a single Reason Refill, with more than 650 REX2 breakbeat files and 42 Redrum kits that cover old- and new-school styles, including psychedelia, funk, R&B, hip-hop, trip-hop, jazz and trance. The loops are raw, edgy and tough; some are filtered and effected, covering all known tempo and fidelity qualifications. Super-hi-fi clarity is not the name of the game here — Planet is all about soul. These collections deliver extremely creative drumming with superlative energetic feel from top to bottom, more often than not straying away from niceties and going straight for the dirty-quirky. Even the Redrum samples carry that lifted-vinyl vibe, making custom beat creation with instant street cred a cinch. Not all of the loops in the original libraries were feasibly ReCyclable, for technical reasons, so Zero-G has kindly supplied them as WAV files directly within the Refill. In fact, every REX2 file and Redrum sound is available as a Refill WAV, as well. I'll never tell another lame drummer joke.
Product Summary
ZERO-G (DIST. BY EAST WEST/SOUNDS ONLINE)
PLANET OF THE BREAKS: THE SERIES > $169.95
At a glance: Hundreds of individual percussion sounds, 650 REX2 breakbeats, 42 Redrum kits.
Contact: tel. (800) 833-8339; e-mail info@soundsonline.com; Web www.soundsonline.com
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