Coldcut have been making electronic based music since about 1986. Their most notable chart position to date was under the guise "Yazz and the Plastic Population" featuring Yazz on vocals. They have done tracks with Junior Reed, Lisa Stansfield, George Jetson and Mark E Smith. They own the very legendary Ninjatune label and are still doing music and remixes with people even to this day! So imagine my joy when I first heard Coldcut would be releasing a sample disc. It was like my way to get a day in the studio with Coldcut without having to pay them thousands. A dream come true.

The Disc.

The sample pack comes as a one DVD package. On putting it into the computer you are faced with a bunch of directories. In this instance I decided I was going to go back to the way I used to work with samples and just used the tempo based WAV loops. There was a selection of BPMs to chose from [70, 88, 133 or something like that]. The selection of tempos is excellent and allow a large array of different genres to be squeezed on to this DVD [drum and bass, electro, hip hop, breakbeat and even jazz].

The beats on this disk are excellent and are probably the highlight although the horn work is also quite amazing. The samples have been done using varying equipment including tape as you can hear the tape hiss on some of the loops but that seems to just add credibility to them. The weakest aspect of the disk is bass loops with not much of a selection being available. Had the bass been as good as the drums this would be the ultimate sample pack.

I am working on a Hip-Hop album for my band Bleed Electric and during our last session we decided to sample this pack [no pun intended] for one of our songs "VI. I Wish I Had Brought My Binoculars" - track can be heard on the OpenDNS. Six tracks in to the album and we hadn't sampled so this felt like THE perfect point to put in some sampling into a Hip-Hop album that will be transcending the realms of Hip-Hop. I am also working on a track with a Welsh Language Pop artist that will utilize samples from this sample pack. This alone should demonstrate the quality contained within, if I am willing to put it into my projects. The £40 price tage is well worth it when you consider there are enough samples here to probably put together 2-5 tracks depending on how heavily those tracks revolve around the samples.

What's also cool is that the pack also contains single hit samples that could be linked up to a MIDI controller allowing you to play those sounds in any way shape or form yourself. Essentially loops and instruments all on the DVD. You can be confident that if you have any music making software at all that you can get something out of this disc even if you use it in the simplest form [as I did] and just use WAV loops in a sequencer.

I really like this artist series sample pack and think that more artists should do this as people would be very much up for buying it. Hopefully it won't be too long before Coldcut do another one as I will be first in the line to get it. For a small moment in time there was nothing more important in the world to me than this disk. If you are looking for vocal samples, this disk is probably not a good choice, this disk is for use musically and the vocals [for want of a better term] are sold seperately!

Pros:

• Excellent drum loops especially for Breakbeat, and Hip-Hop
• Nice synthesizer and orchestral sounds
• Excellent horns and flutes
• Nice tempo choices and genre span

Cons:

• Not enough good bass samples on the disk
• More tailored for instrumentals