I have been an unabashed fan of eLab sample libraries for some time now. They are almost always great sounding, well documented, and stylistically interesting. "The Nu Directions in House" collection was stellar, and many of the libraries have a slightly hip-hop vibe, even when the samples are specifically in that style. With "Smokers Delight" ($99.95), eLab cut to the chase with a collection of smooth hip-hop and lounge beats and samples. "Smokers Delight" is a three-disc set, one audio CD and two CD-ROMs. The CD-ROMs include both Acidized .wav files for your favorite loops app and .rx2 files for use with Reason and many digital audio sequencers.



The quality of samples in "Smokers Delight" is predictably superb, but not always hi-fi. Some sounds, like the boat-load of electric guitar and flute samples, are squeaky clean, but there are plenty of gritty, grainy, noisy sounds as well. Finding the right sound is very easy with "Smokers Delight," because it is organized very intelligently. The CD-ROMs include all of the samples and sounds on the audio CD, plus many extras sorted into folders with just music samples, just beats, just single shots, and so on. So if you are working on a track and decide is needs a Rhodes chord stab, you don't need to paw through a ton of folders to find one. Another really fabulous thing about this set is that all of the loops are broken down into their constituent parts, so for each loop, you can use just the kick loop, just the snare loop, of just the hi-hats when building up your own loops.



"Smokers Delight" is very easy to like. There are great beats, cool bass lines, tones of electric piano chords and lines, cool flute and muted trumpet lines, and a lot more. The sounds fit in beautifully for downtempo electronica, slow R&B, smooth jazz, and any groove-heavy, sample-happy music that live in the 80-100 bpm range of this collection.