Soniccouture sent me several titles to choose from, all of them highly inventive. Where to start? This time out I’ll focus on two related collections of construction kits, Abstrakt Breaks 1 and 2. Both titles are organized in the same way: Loops are grouped into two folders, “Down Tempo” and “Up Tempo.” Within each of these you’ll find 20-plus loops, most of which are broken into four to six elements (kick, snare, hats, glitches, special effects, etc.). The bang-for-buck factor is high: Everything is provided in Rex, WAV, and Apple Loops formats, and the Rex editing is top-notch. For example, I loaded fistfuls of Rex’d loop elements at varying tempos, and true to Soniccouture’s claim, the loops lined up perfectly — I couldn’t detect any bad slicing. More importantly, mixing and matching elements was extremely easy, and I found I could take loops down 20 to 30 bpm before things started sounding strange.
It’s obvious that care was taken in processing the elements of each groove. There’s no shortage of reversed, lo-fi, bit-reduced, delayed, distorted, ring modulated, and filtered percussion. Kicks and snares are liberally effected, and in some cases these sounds don’t even qualify as conventional “kicks” and “snares.” This is exactly why I love AB 1 and 2. Normally, it would take hours of experimentation to create drum sounds this unique. However, I found I could easily snip bits from different elements, sprinkle them on top of more “straight ahead” programmed beats, and have something fresh in no time.
Groove-wise, the downtempo material fits nicely into hip-hop and trip-hop veins, while the uptempo breaks smack of up-to-the-minute drum ’n’ bass and IDM. There’s definite swing to many of the loops, which I didn’t mind, but if you try mixing strictly quantized parts, you might have to massage the timing to get everything to gel.
Abstrakt Breaks 1 and 2 are full of inspiring rhythms and sounds. These are the kind of forward-thinking, bleeding-edge breaks that could easily inject unexpected excitement into otherwise well-behaved productions.
Breakbeat libraries in Rex, WAV, and Apple Loops formats.
PROS
Creatively processed and programmed breaks. Excellent Rex editing.
CONS
None to speak of.
Boxed, $64 each; download, $59 each.
Soniccouture www.soniccouture.com