Brian Transeau (aka BT) has always eagerly revealed the production techniques behind his stellar progressive house and nu-skool breaks tracks. With his Breakz from the Nu Skool and Twisted Textures sample-CD collections, which he created with assistance from coproducer Doug Rodgers and programmers and editors Carlos Vasquez and Michael DiMattia, BT continues to share his generosity with dance-music producers looking for distinctive high-quality sounds and beats. Unlike most personality-oriented sample CDs, these collections do not attempt to give you everything you need to make a soundalike track. Each volume is geared toward a specific application to give you a wide variety of options for crafting professional-quality tracks.
Breakz from the Nu Skool (two CDs; WAV, $129; Akai, $299; GigaSampler, $299) is the best collection to start with if you can only afford one. It consists of drum patterns and breakbeats, offering 436 loops for creating rhythm tracks. The rhythms range from 66 to 180 bpm and encompass a wide variety of mostly electronic styles such as drum 'n' bass, house, funky breaks, funk, hip-hop, and more. The loops are arranged by tempo, but if you have a particular style in mind you may have to dig around a while, as many of the loops are identified by rather ambiguous titles such as “Cat on Drugs,” “Rugby Is Alive,” and “Conclusion Fruit.”
Almost every pattern has its own distinctive sound and personality resulting from extensive creative processing using everything from cheap stompboxes to computer editing. Most of the patterns last four measures, and only a handful of variation patterns are provided for building longer, more sophisticated tracks within a particular sound set. Although the tonal variation from pattern to pattern is impressive, the lack of individual one-shot instrument samples that comprise each pattern means you'll have to spend some time with Steinberg's ReCycle or similar loop-chopping program to create song-length drum tracks with the tonal consistency and rhythmic variation most producers desire. The rhythms generally sound fresh and original, although BT did include a few pedestrian techstep and four-on-the-floor beats.
Consisting primarily of long, evolving, complex pads and soundscapes, Twisted Textures (two audio CDs, $129; three Akai CD-ROMs, $299; two GigaSampler/Halion CD-ROMS, $299) is aimed less at the dance-music producers and more at composers of ambient music or film soundtracks. However, the sounds could also be useful as intros, breakdowns, endings, or underlying beds for a progressive house or ambitious techno track. The collection offers 411 sounds that are categorized by “emotions” such as Hope/Beauty, Happiness/Accomplishment, Impending/Lurking, and Supernatural/Cosmic Presence. The documentation lists recommended loop points at their exact sample location (when the sound is sampled at 44.1kHz) for each sound, making it easy to program seamless loops.
Like Breakz from the Nu Skool samples, the sounds are heavily processed — most sound as though they were generated with a Symbolic Sounds Kyma sound-design workstation. Even with the immense selection of textures and timbres some overlap occurs, such as the Imperial Forces and Head of Wire samples, which sound virtually identical. If your tastes lean toward rich, complex, and moody tones, chances are — with more than 135 minutes of sounds to choose from — you'll find what you're looking for.
Overall Rating (out of 5): 5 (Breakz from the Nu Skool); 4.5 (Twisted Textures)
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