Electro-Harmonix Crash Pad
Mini Reviews | Reviews
107
Frontline Producer
Indie Rock | £29.95
www.loopmasters.com
You can see the appeal
of forming a Rock
band out of samples.
Frontline Producer’s
latest offering, Indie
Rock, gives you all the
choruses, bridges, verses and riffs, without
ever throwing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s at
your head. Not to say that these loops
don’t rock hard. There are 19 song
construction kits, with 1.82GB of content.
And tempos range from 72-143bpm.
Each song is great to pick through,
and ripe for plundering. The wildest are
the heavy electric and acoustic guitar
workouts, which run from Under The
Bridge-style tearjerkers to Last Nite
anthemia. The organ and strings are
top-notch, too. Add to that great playing
from the assembled musicians,
throughout, and some weighty amp
selections, and you have a serious
collection. Roy Spencer
8/10
Sample Magic Raw Analogue
Funk | £34.90
www.samplemagic.com
Now, this is a proper
‘one-stop’ Funky
House pack. Well, for
this price you’d hope it
was chock-a-block
with 808 beats, raw
analogue basslines, quirky keys and
belting vocals, and it doesn’t disappoint.
From the weighty batch of Gospel
choir chops and salacious frontman moans
and groans, to the straight-up grooving
Rhodes workouts, everything is a joy to
work with. And they come in bulk, too.
283 track-starting music loops, anyone?
Besides head-turning amounts of WAV,
REX, Apple Loops and MIDI les, you get
ve custom drum kits and ve sample
patches to mess with. So, put a weekend
aside to get your hands dirty with this one.
All the folders can be bought
separately at the Sample Magic website,
so pick what you need if your budget is
tight. Gotta give a shout out to the breaks
and percussion loops crate – that’s some
funky drumming, fo’ sho. Roy Spencer
8/10
Black Octopus Monstrous Bass
House | $29.95
www.primeloops.com
The Black Octopus
collective are back
with another ‘does
what it says on the tin’
sample pack. This
time around it’s you
bass monsters that are catered for. For just
under 30 bucks you get 75 bombastic
sounds for NI Massive, modelled on the
output of the nastier end of the EDM scale
– think Habstrakt, Skrillex, Ghastly, and
the aptly named NGHTMRE and you’re on
the right track. There’s enough variation to
keep the goose bumps on your arms up as
your cones get a workout, with a decent
mix of subs, leads, and some serious FX to
layer as you see t.
‘Top producers’ are credited with the
sound design and, whoever they may be,
they certainly know their bass onions.
Although the title says ‘Bass House’, you
can see Glitch heads and Techno bods
dipping their ngers in this pack and
nding some treats, too. Roy Spencer
7/10
Rankin Audio Organic
Downtempo | £29.95
www.loopmasters.com
Another issue, another
dope Rankin Audio
sample pack. This one
is a tad tenderer than
their usual fare, but no
less polished. Organic
Downtempo is a set that conjures up some
lush and verdant beats for the more
discerning electronic music producer. The
‘organic’ elements come from real world
sampling and eld recordings – from
micro hits to more drawn-out melodies,
captured from a wilderness not near you.
Also in this 1.1GB pack are snappy
live drums, vocal hits, and rich, ethereal
pads. Perfect for adding a touch of class
to your more straight-up Future Bass
arrangements. The bofns at Rankin
manage to make the foley-driven sound
design sound like a vital component when
you add them to your tracks, which is no
mean feat. Roy Spencer
9/10
True Samples Adventures in
Hip-Hop | €27.49
www.soundstosample.com
The True Samples
packs usually have
names like Techno
Bullets and Future
Bass House, rather
than Adventures in
Hip-Hop. Still, after icking through the
ten mastered and unmastered construction
kits on offer here, fans of that techier style
will soon nd out they keep that big room
noise they’re famous for, regardless of
genre. Not that this is ‘Hip-Hop’ in the
Golden Era sense. It’s on that modern,
Trap-ish tip producers like DJ Khaled,
Bones and the 808 Maa like to bring
– booming sub basslines are to the fore
across all kits, as are skittish 808 hats,
and Post-Dre melancholy piano chords.
Props to the engineers here – the deep
bottom-end on each bassline is always
matched with the perfect balance of the
more searing top notes in each track,
giving each of the kits a full sonic
spectrum that’ll give the speakers in your
local club a proper workout. Roy Spencer
7/10
FMU305.rev_mini.indd 107 4/19/16 6:28 PM
samplemagic.com
Samples__Patches__MIDI__Plugins__Books__Apps__Courses
ABLETON BASS RACK
Created from ahost of classic
hardware –including the Roland
SH101
,Juno 60 and ProphetPro-One
–weserveup127 analogue bass hits
inside apowerfulcustom macro-
controlledrack instrument.
£16.90
MIAMI SESSIONS
From poolside to club: get the sound
of Miami 2016 with 1.2GB of slickdeep
beats, techy sub bass, 90s-inspired
piano riffs and melodic synth motifs
fusing the best in deep, tech and
tropical house.
£34.90
400MB of stompingbeats, big-room
bass, expansive melodic progressions,
dubby delayed chords, classic90s
stabs, processed vocalloops and
detailed FX tools merging the best of
tech, deep and dub house.
DEEP MELODIC TECH
£16.90
In true London style we bring you 1GB of loops, MIDI, hits and kits
inspired by the heydayofUKGarage. Locked and loaded with
hundreds of skippy 2-step grooves, bumpin’ and flexin' b-lines, classic
keys, old schoolorgans, MC shouts and soulful vocal tools, this
genre-defining collection is gonna make you feel ‘good, good, good’!
UK GARAGE
£34.90