It can sometimes be a depressing feeling when you test your track on a club system for the first time. The kick drum that seemed to be doing the business in your home studio loses its low end and sounds more like a builder tying to knock through from next door. Precision production is a necessity if you want to rock the clubs!



Luckily, the good people at Wave Alchemy are drum scientists of the highest order and their new samples library, Drum Tools 01, is a massive collection of handcrafted minimal drum hits designed to get both the speakers and the dance floor moving.



The pack comes as a download or on DVD, with 1,950 24-bit drum hits, plus 16-bit versions and sampler instruments for EXS-24, Kontakt, Battery, NN-XT, SFZ, and HALion.



The immense number of samples has been thoughtfully divided into descriptive folders for drum type and style (e.g. deep minimal kicks, punchy kicks, solid kicks etc).



A large amount of vintage and modern kit has been used to create and sculpt the many synth stabs, glitch ripples, noise effects, and kick, snare and hats hits.



Some of the good sounds may seem quite similar, but this just gives you more options, and the sheer number available means there is plenty of variety, from more traditional 808 kicks and snares to some original heavily processed sounds.



There’s also a bonus collection of TB-303 licks, some superb synth chords and stabs, plus some sub-enhancing and transient attack drum tools.



Where you’ll truly appreciate the collection depends on in you’re the kind of person who can tell the difference between 472 different electronic kicks. But for those who can, Wave Alchemy has crafted an immense library of both solid and original drum sounds that are relevant for all styles of electronic music, not just minimal.



Verdict: An immense collection of finely crafted electronic drum samples!