IK Multimedia
Mini Reviews | Reviews
99
Inspiration Sounds – Acid House
Basslines | £15
www.producerloops.com
With its beaming
smiley face cover, and
Haç colour scheme,
you know what you’re
getting yourself into
with this sample pack.
The 240 squelching, bouncing, grooving
and looping basslines on offer capture that
Second Summer of Love for those of you
who missed it (or can’t remember it) the
rst time around.
The late ’80s and early ’90s club sound
was dominated by Acid House, and all its
trademark bassline elements are handily
laid out for you to plunder here. As a
certain Fatboy once pointed out – everyone
needs a 303. Thankfully Roland’s bass
synthesizer is represented particularly
well. Like everything else it’s locked at
128bpm and handily key-labelled.
The majority of loops are lively and
nostalgic, and sound great washed under
your favourite lters. You also get a folder
of 248 drum-hit loops and 85 hands-in-
the-air synth loops to play with. Sorted!
Roy Spencer
8/10
SM101 – MIDI Elements:
Chillwave Drums | £13
www.samplemagic.com
It’s time to give the
drummer some again
with the help of
another Sample Magic
pack. This time around
it’s for all the glo-
heads out there that like their drum
programming on that Chillwave tip.
What you get here is the magic number
of 101 MIDI drum loops. Vintage
machines like the Akai MPC60 and
MPC1000 have been dusted off and
tapped up for some great downtempo
grooves. Each one is skilfully mapped out
to the general MIDI, so all you have to do
is gure out which one of the 11 bundled
drum kits you fancy eshing the
arrangement out with.
It’s the exibility that’s the real selling
point. Whether you pick the Battery,
Kontakt, Kong or Ableton templates, you
can run the Chillwave Drums 12-hit kits
over them, or make your own variations out
of the extra 131 analogue one-shots
bundled with the pack. Roy Spencer
8/10
SM White Label
Analogue Techno | £17
www.samplemagic.com
Techno music sprang
from a bleeping bunch
of analogue machines.
In that spirit, the boys
at SM White Label
have dusted off their
vintage analogue synths and outboard
units to bring you a vast section of sounds
that inspired a generation.
It’s basically the best of the gear that
put Detroit and Chicago on the map. The
800MB of royalty-free loops bristle with
character, and crackle with the correct
degree of analogue impurity that coloured
the underground sounds of these
machines all those years ago.
Distinctive hat loops come to life, bass
riffs ll your room, and raw dog synth lines
ooze classic status. It’s vintage, but with
the added bonus of being brought bang
up-to-date with some expert tweaking and
circuit-bending. Simon Arblaster
8/10
Singomakers – Ultimate
Hip-Hop | £20
www.loopmasters.com
With all their
Doomsday Dubstep
and EDM and Main
Room House packs
you might think
Singomakers are not
the most qualied people to be putting out
something called Ultimate Hip-Hop. Fans
of their Soulful Glitch Hop pack won’t
mind though, as the basslines have that
edge on the whole, as do the majority of
melody samples. And classic Hip-Hop fans
will be appeased, as the drum loops have
bounce and really punch through. The
snare hits have a lot of potential, and
could nd a happy home in any style of
Rap tune. Same with the kicks and stabs.
The scratches in the Vinyl FX folder are
weak and uninspiring, however. But the
Synth Loops are moody and orchestral,
with just the right amount of chopping to
be funky. Plenty to pick at then, but not
Ultimate. Roy Spencer
6/10
Raw Cutz – The Raw Cutz
Super Pack | £150
www.loopmasters.com
Hip-Hop changed up
after the sample boom
of the mid ’90s.
Producers like J-Dilla
and DJ Premier
stopped relying on
simple four-bar loops, and instead got
funky by chopping up one shots, stings
and samples into their beats. This gigantic
pack is brimming with the kind of material
those cats would have gone bananas over.
This 3.34GB pack has been lifted from
over 30 previous titles, with the choicest
drum breaks, musical ourishes, stabs,
and individual drum sounds from packs
like Smokers Delight, Premier Beats,
Vinylistics and the X-Static Goldmine
series plundered for your pleasure.
It might be nearly £150, but at up to
70% off the original list price it’s a steal.
And with nearly 6,000 les to hand, you
may never need to buy another Hip-Hop
sample pack again. Roy Spencer
10/10
FMU274.rev_mini.indd 99 12/5/13 10:13 AM