ONE-SHOTS
Jun 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Jason Scott Alexander
SAMPLE MAGIC BREAKBUSTERS
ALL THE FUNK 'N' FILTH YOU CAN HANDLE
Following the commercial dance appeal of Funky House Grooves, relative newcomer Sample Magic focuses its attention on all things chunkier and funkier in this outstanding new three-CD hardcore breaks library. Rather than building around thematically limiting construction kits, the 1,000-plus loops, licks and one-shots are arranged as 31 tracks on audio CD1 for auditioning and hardware sampling, 24-bit Acidized WAV files on CD2 and 16-bit REX files on CD3. Special format files also contain HALion, EXS24 and Reason patches. Loops are 125, 130, 135 or 140 bpm, and keygrouping of melodic material is thankfully kept to a minimum.
The 168 ball-crushing breaks span decades of influence, from grit-infused acoustic funk with 808 boom augmentation to heavily distorted and effected industrial and post-modern filth. Devastating kicks and gut-punching sub-basses tie the knot with all sorts of quirky, squeaky vintage electro-percussion trickery for highly inspiring, era-transcending beats. The same goes for the top-end percussion-loops folder. This outrageous fun includes rapid-fire percussion warfare, tightly looped vocoded drum phrases, factory inspired electro-mechanical beatbox escapades and more. Together with the 95 bass and 124 synth loops, you'll really start pushing your speaker cones. From panoramic, pitch-warped resonant saw lines to nail-biting '80s FM and brain-freezing squelched arpeggios, fat sound is delivered by the tubful. The “mashed vocals” is perhaps the coolest supplementary folder I've encountered in any sample library. Randomly chopped and flipped, these male and female spoken words, vocal breaks/scats and sung phrases are edited unrecognizably — a master class in digital cut-up, glitch and stutter theory. Hundreds of beat-matched scratch loops, FX stabs, builds and textures, as well as individual drum hits, round out the collection. Breakbusters is a must-have that will shake your bones and melt your b-boy soul.
SAMPLE MAGIC (DIST. BY BIG FISH AUDIO)
BREAKBUSTERS > $99.95
Contact: www.bigfishaudio.com or www.samplemagic.com
SUBMERSIBLE MUSIC MPC LOCKBOX
AUDIO LOOPS AND KITS FOR DRUMCORE 2
MPC Lockbox is the first DrumCore 2 Drummerpack designed specifically for DJs, remixers and dance/hip-hop producers, culling its 650 MB of audio loops (no MIDI loops, unfortunately) from libraries previously released under the SonicEmulations banner. You get 19 GrooveSets composed from top-selling Hotbox Volumes 1 through 3, Trickbox, Icebox Hip-Hop Drums and a previously unreleased sixth library called Orbital. There are also five prebuilt DrumCore drumkits containing many of the sounds on which the loops are based. Despite everything fitting on a single CD, the size and assortment of this collection is huge. The idea is that each GrooveSet is based on a completely different core soundset, musical flavor or prominent effect (micro-delayed, filtered, gated, etc.) and contains dozens of loops ranging from discrete grooves to progressions of themed variants. Mixed in with high-energy nu-electro and club-style urban grooves are hard-hitting old-school gems that bring back memories of all the '80s and '90s MPC masters. There's even a distinctly downtempo vibe going on in Icebox that can work extremely well to chill-out feverish rock and pop tracks. All the beats are bangin' with inventive production of the highest caliber — no boring overused snare and percussion sounds here. In particular, the straight and non-effected Hotbox loops will smoke subwoofers with monster kicks and solid countering booms. Even the heavily effected GrooveSets were inspiring. With tons of loops you can customize any way you wish, MPC Lockbox represents incredible value for anyone looking to add authentic, raw sampled sound to his or her modern urban or dance productions.
SUBMERSIBLE MUSIC
MPC LOCKBOX > $59.99
At a glance: A collection of six authentic MPC-based urban and hip-hop loop libraries and five drum kits cultivated into a single DrumCore 2 add-on.
Contact: www.drumcore.com
NUCLEUS SOUNDLAB AMBIENT SPACE I
ADD ROOM TO MOVE IN REASON
Flying under the radar of the industry's heavy-hitting sample houses and distributors, the five-year-old Nucleus Soundlab creates explorative libraries that have built a loyal following of customers for its niche Reason ReFill, SoundFont and Wusikstation format products. Ambient Space I, the first of a new series, expands the line with extremely long ambient passages that have been programmed at the source to naturally animate and evolve over time. Sample lengths range from 30 seconds to well more than two minutes. Insane marriages of convolution, FFT analysis, time-stretching and additive resynthesis were used to build highly imaginative soundscapes that are completely void of the premature loop points that traditionally hinder sampled pads. Consisting of 50 base waveforms, the 209 MB ReFill includes 50 NN19 presets and 32 custom Combinator patches that draw explicitly upon Reason's effects, vocoder and step-sequencer modules in crafty routings to create stunning atmospheres. Programs such as “Ambiosity” and “Thermosphere Generation” showcase the library's dreamy side with glassy, highly polished rotating spheres and sharp metallic and vaporous pads, while the brooding drones of “Filter Space” and “Ancient Game” show off the darker, more rhythmic side to the library. The aptly named “Redrum Crossbreed” shoves an evolving carrier pad through the BV512 Vocoder with the factory “Groovemasters” ReDrum kit acting as modulator. Delicious!
NUCLEUS SOUNDLAB
AMBIENT SPACE I > $24.95, DOWNLOAD; $34.95, MULTIFORMAT DVD (PAYPAL ONLY)
At a glance: Extremely long ambient soundscapes in Reason 3, Wusikstation 2/3, and SF2/SFZ formats.
Contact: www.nucleus-soundlab.com
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
