Pros: Excellent material. Loops are broken out into their constituent parts for lots of recombination flexibility. Organizational scheme on the WAV disc really speeds up location of elements.



Cons: Much of the material on the WAV disc isn't represented on the audio disc.



Bottom Line: The best of both worlds: Use the wonderful loops as-is or mix and match elements and hits to roll your own.



Loops, loops, loops. Haven't we had enough? Who am I kidding - with the continual splintering and morphing of fashionable music styles, and the insatiable appetite of musicians, remixers, and producers for new material, I doubt we'll see loop collections fade away anytime soon. Like many of you, I spend hours staring mesmerically into Propellerhead Reason and Ableton Live, concocting the most infectious grooves I can muster. Loop collections are a staple ingredient for any groove chef, and when we find a good one, we're elated. Crummy ones embitter us.



These loops are fresh, fat, and full of character. Throughout, tricks like multiple layered hi-hats, kicks of varying pitches, and snares with carefully crafted decay variations keep the loops animated but not busy. Almost all of them include a non-pitched synth or sound effect element that adds further spice. Because these are programmed loops, timing is perfect. Fans of Kling Klang clockwork perfection will dig the exactitude of the pulse, but those of us with an appreciation for warmer, greasier feels arenOt frozen out. The loops here strike a nice balance.



Standouts include "Tank" with its "R2D2" sfx loop. Not to worry - no Darth Vaderesque Lucasfilm lawyers will come looking for you if you use this loop commercially, because the effect in question is an original creation, not a sample from a Star Wars flick. "Slim" is an unsweetened lemon smoothie. The horn line, twangy funk guitar, and bass line (all in different keys - tart!) are likely sampled from some old record, but they've all been chopped and re-sequenced to the point where even their creators would have a hard time identifying them. I liked the breezy "Wack," which has a feel that recalls Pink's "I'm Comin' Up" and 2 Live Crew's infamous parental-advisory-label firestarter "We Want Some Pu**y." Both are classic summer jams; "Wack" will doubtless fuel a couple more. "Finga" hypnotizes with a percussion part that falls somewhere between congas, tablas, and mbira. It's a shame its breakout loops are only available on the WAV disc, as is the case for about three-quarters of the material on Ballistix. "7even," an infectious funk workout, is as lackluster as this collection gets, and it's far from lame. Tech editor John Krogh agreed: "I'm consistently impressed by the quality of eLab's sounds. This library is no exception to their standard of excellence. The vibe is solid across the board, and it's clear special attention was paid to crafting the individual elements. I'll be mining this gem for months to come."



Lots of smaller bits are on hand, too. Highly processed and mutated vinyl samples, snippets of basslines, rhythm guitar, synth parts, vocals, scratch riffs, and noise loops all add value to the proceedings. Most of them seem trance-oriented, one bar long and meant to repeat hypnotically. In addition to their obvious application, try using them at an almost subliminally low volume, buried deep in your rhythm track. They can add a sinister edge to a sunny pop track or lend whimsy to darker jams.



Ballistix presents its contents in a no-hassle, clearly organized way that keeps your creativity flowing as much as possible. Each track contains the full production loop (with track indexes delineating the variations), each intrument's looped part soloed, and the individual one-shots used to create the loop. Bravo! Many other collections put the loops and hits on different parts of the disc, making necessary a lot of back-and-forth track shuttling that really takes my mind off the groove. This approach keeps my mind on the music and the music on my mind, and that's huge.



On the WAV disc, it's a similar story: Three folders contain the breaks, FX and musical loops, and drum hits, respectively. In the breaks folder, each break's loop/sub-loop/hit elements are gathered together rather than being scattered across category folders. In the music loops folder, 135 bpm elements and 140 bpm elements are presented in separate folders. And all the kicks, snares, and hi-hats are segregated into their own folders within the drum tools folder. Neat and tidy. It speeds up access to the bits you need, which means your creative flow is derailed less than with collections that aren't so rigorously organized.



I had a great time banging the WAV loops into Reason. Since they're not REX files, I just loaded the loops into the NN-XT. The one-shot WAVs made great ReDrum kit instruments. They've become permanent residents in ReDrum's file directory on my computer. Using the loops as-is in Reason without any kind of auto-syncing allowed me to check their tempos and loop points for consistency and accuracy. For all practical purposes, they sync and loop perfectly. One or two loops exhibited a split second of silence before the end point, causing a "dropout" until they were re-triggered on the next beat, but since they locked up tempo-wise, a case could be made that the silence was left there for artistic reasons, and fair enough.



This is a great collection, already in use by some major names, and it's easy to see why. Loads of creative and inspiring material, organized in a neat and intelligent way, they obviously had pros in mind when they started. Score another hit for Sweden's eLab.