Jazz, perhaps the most promiscuous of all musical styles, seems to love getting into bed with other types of music, and clearly isn't picky. There's jazz rock and jazz funk, jazzy house and drum and bass, and, more pertinent to this review, latin jazz and afro jazz. On Loopmasters' Jazz/World sample CD, the emphasis is firmly on the jazzy side of South American and African music - Glenn Miller fans need not apply! The CD features percussion, double-bass, flute, guitar, piano and saxophone loops, plus a multi-sampled double bass (with associated Propellerhead Reason NNXT sampler file) and a range of individual percussion hits. The individual files are clearly labelled with name, tempo, and key where applicable, and are arranged in folders by tempo.

For me, the drum loops are the best thing here - they're interesting, well played, and nicely recorded. They cover 65-140bpm, and for each pattern the kit, the percussion (in most cases congas), and the full ensemble (plus fills for each) are available separately, which means that you can make the limited number of patterns go quite a long way. There are also 64 WAV files of individual hits, covering the kit drums, congas, and djembe.



The remainder of the library contains a smaller selection of flute, guitar, piano, and sax loops, all designed to sit happily with other loops in the same key and tempo. There are some nice breathy flute licks; single-note and chordal riffs covering Latin-American nylon-string and heavily chorused West African electric-guitar styles; predominantly Latino piano chords and runs; and some tinny, African-style ensemble sax playing. There's also a folder of way-out solo sax noodling, probably the least World-related material on the CD.



Jazz/World 's strong suit is that it's very easy (and rather fun) to pick out a drum loop, add bass, guitar, and flute, and knock up a convincing bit of music in just a couple of minutes. But this is also the library's main weakness: while the loops are not overtly presented as construction kits, that's effectively what they are and therefore I fear much of the library could be of limited use elsewhere.