４つ星

「．．．ファット・ボーイ・スリムやケミカル・ブラザーズ系のドラム・ループ。個性的なプロムラミングと奏法の数々が試されていて、リズムもイメージもとにかくバラエティが豊か。．．．ドラム・フィル、パーカッション・ループ、ハイハット・ループは、過激なディストーションやフランジでデフォルメされていて、"次世代感"が漂っている。．．．この『ビッグ･ビート』は、何の変哲もない音ではなく、ちょっとハードコアな奇抜で実験的サウンドが中心だ。．．．プロディジーのドイツ版はこんな感じだろうか？ とっても面白いサンプリングCD！」 4 Stars

From the outset, Big Beat from German samplists Ueberschall looks like a 'lots-of-everything' release, boasting a combination of drum loops, basses (real and synth), guitar licks, keyboard parts, effects, vocals, and atmospheric loops. The drum loops are heavily geared towards wannabe Fat Boy Slims and prototype Chemical Brothers, with a good range of tones and textures reflecting interesting programming and performance styles.



Combining live drum kit performances with heavily processed and often distorted sampled sounds, the loops are one of the strongest parts of this release. Ranging from 100 to 140bpm in tempo, you get a handful of rhythmic variants, mix-outs and deconstructions within each specific tempo set, and style-wise they seem to leap between many contemporary types of loop from kitsch to hardcore very nicely. Along with the loops are a few welcome drum fills, as well as percussion loops and some straight hi-hat patterns, all with a very 'next century' feel, maximising distortion, flange and other forms of sonic mutilation.



The real bass licks are another high point, featuring a number of usable phrases and licks covering a wide spectrum of sounds, from soul to hip-hop funk. Cleverly realising that almost everything that can be said with a TB303 has probably been said already, the synth-bass section is kept to a minimum.



The low point comes (as on so many sample CDs) with the rather unfortunate 'Vocal' section. Heavy use of pitch-shifters, vocoders and nasty compression can't disguise the fact that this is basically a few German accents gathered around a microphone holding their noses and offering samplists such profundities as 'No Pain No Gain!' and 'Get Stoned!' In a word, shite.



Fortunately, the 'Trippin FX' loops crawl from the wreckage and manage to salvage a little bit of dignity with a weird cross mix of percussive and instrumental sounds, clumsily spliced together to make some really interestingly odd loops. The guitar section is also worthy of note, featuring both great distorted rock sounds and softer 'Strat'-type chords. The piano section is a combination of some heavy single samples and a few short jazz and blues licks, all badly recorded on a piano in desperate need of tuning, but slightly ironic and actually rather usable all the same. The Rhodes and organ licks also work extremely well, offering combinations of nicely performed mellow chords, phrases and licks. There are a few single-hit drum sounds, vinyl scratches and effects at the end of the disc, which times out at over 78 minutes. You certainly get a lot of playing for your pound.



Big Beat has clearly been put together with a cute ear for sound design, always opting for the experimental side of hardcore dance rather than playing it safe, and largely this works in its favour. If you ignore the risible vocal section, what you have is an intelligent and often highly creative sample CD that at times reaches the brilliance of even Spectrasonics' Distorted Reality series. Perhaps if the Prodigy had come from Munich they would have sounded something like this?