BeatsAndBeyond.com Review: Jamie Anderson
Tech-house boss Jamie Anderson has compiled two massive sound libraries for Loopmasters, your number one spot for ass-whooping royalty free samples. Jamie's many years of studio experience and headliner gigs at Panorama Bar, Love Parade and Cocoon have made him one of the most credible and versatile artists in the house scene and his productions on Radio Slave's Rekids, Alter Ego's Klang Elektronik and Sven Väth's Cocoon imprints have made him a personal favorite of Richie Hawtin, Dj Sneak and Laurent Garnier amongst many others, which explains why we have been looking forward to his packs for quite some time.
Enough with the name-dropping. Obviously you want to know if this pack is a worthy contribution to your studio setup. Let's find out...
We road-tested this sample pack using Ableton Live 7, a digital drum machine, and a few soft synths for compatibility reasons. As is the case with all Loopmasters products, all sounds are divided in four main folders: Patches, Rex (Loops), Sounds & FX and Wav Loops. Each folder contains a set of sub folders dedicated to specific sounds such as kicks, drums, hi-hats etc. In total, that means nearly 900 MB of sample madness split into 1,200 samples, 220 loops, 990 single shot samples... and loads more.
Sounds & FX
This folder is one of the biggest in the pack and ranges from analogue synth sounds to chords, hats & shakers, kick drums and everything in between. The Analogue Synths and Bass sounds are divided into C & G keys and are extremely usable for adding short key stabs to your house productions, while the Kick drum section contains some of the crispiest punches we ever heard in a pack. But what really makes this section special is the huge amount of bass sounds, which comes with some of the best sounds we ever heard outside of any regular dedicated bass module. The Juno 106 bass sounds are incredibly warm and fit to you in pretty much any composition regardless of genre, while the 'regular' bass sounds will also come in handy when you want to add a bit of nastiness to your rhythms. In terms of basic rhythm parts, this section really stands out from the already high quality packs we heard from Loopmasters so far.
Wav Loops & Rex
Divided into Bass, Musical and Drum Loops, this collection of sounds (123-128 bpm) contains a myriad of sweet pre-manufactured loops to use as an extra in your productions. The Musical loops vary from trancey (in a very house kind of way) to minimal, with each of them sounding very basic to trigger your creativity. The Drum loops (tech-house alert!!) would be our pick of the bunch, but the others are honestly just as good.
Patches
The Patches department also houses a huge amount of loops to use in combination with EXS24, Halion, Kontakt, NNXT and SFZ. They're similar to the WAV loops, but load these babies into your sampler and a whole new world of creative opportunities will open before your very eyes.
Our verdict:
Top marks for this one! The ever reliable Loopmasters collective has managed to drop another massive collection of samples that will definitely be of great value to your music. The Sounds & FX section is among the biggest and most versatile we have come across in any of the Loopmasters products so far, with the Loops and Patches sounds completing a formidable sound library.
