Celt Islam Sufi Dub Soundsystem Review, Dub Sample CD, Asian Dub Loops, Sitar Samples

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review 2009-08-20

Celt Islam Reviewed at BassMusic Blog

Loopmasters recently got in touch and sent over a copy of their latest sample pack for review - titled Celt Islam: Sufi Dub Soundsystem. For those who don't know, Celt Islam is a UK-based producer, working in the genre of what he calls 'Sufi Dub'. This is, to my ears, somewhat of a three-way soundclash between rootsy dub, modern dubstep and Asian world music influences.

So it's from this kind of background that this sample pack is composed: you get 454 samples, from drum loops to FX, vocals, musical loops and so on. They range from being fully 'world music', with sitars and tabla, to synths and analogue sounding FX, and are largely between 120 - 135BPM.

The drum breaks all sound good, they're well produced, and all contain subtle details with dub effects floating in and out of the mix to keep the interest. There's also a folder of 'ethnic percussion loops' and this really caught my attention - the loops are played by some well-known percussionists and really have a lot of character. From the Dholak to the Tabla, there were lots of useful sounds, and although a couple of the loops had a touch of background noise, my only real complaint would be that there weren't more of them.

The musical loops section has some really interesting stuff too, from Sitars to Flutes to dubbed out Pianos, some straight, some glitched up, with a few synth pads thrown in for good measure, and I think this was my favourite part - there were loads of interesting textures and sounds, with a pretty wide sonic palette; there was certainly more than enough to give you some new ideas here.

This pack will obviously appeal to anyone working in the world music, ambient, dub and 'ethnic' inspired areas, but will likely appeal to dubsteppers too; there has for a while been a trend in dubstep to bring in interesting sounds from other cultures - see Benny Ill & Hatcha's track Highland Spring or Distance's classic 'Nomad' for instance. On top of that though, there's potential for people who just want to add an extra colour to their tracks. I've already used a couple of the percussion loops in some orchestral(ish) music that we were pitching to a TV advert, and it fit perfectly.

Downsides? Well, I'd say that the vocal samples are somewhat unimaginative - lots of ragga shouts of "all junglists!" and "rewind!" which, although authentic sounding, and featuring the talents of the mighty Bongo Chili, don't bring much new to the table, and likewise some of the FX; if you need some general dubby FX then there are lots here, they sound good and are well recorded, but aren't really as inspiring as some of the other areas of this pack.

But, at £24.95 this offers very good value and especially in the areas of the recorded Indian instruments, it really shines.

If you want to hear some of the loops for yourself, check out the Loopmasters Soundcloud page, where you can download 10 loops from this pack (and indeed loads of the other packs) for free. Likewise, follow them on Twitter and they'll send you free samples every week. And if that wasn't enough, anyone who creates an account at their website gets a load more free samples too. You really can't say fairer than that.

Thanks to our friends at Bassmusicblog for the review.