Sample Magic - Sample DVDs, loops and downloads for house, dance, electro and trance music

"Soundtrack & Chill is the latest release from Sample Magic and sees the team moving away from their usual electronic and dance-based packs towards a more relaxed and acoustic place. The DVD contains 1.46GB of 24-bit / 44.1kHz audio in Wav, Apple Loops, Rex2 and Stylus RMX formats, plus sampler patches for Kontakt, HALion, EXS24 and NN-XT.

These hits and loops range from 60-80bpm and are spread across ten folders entitled Beds, Chords-Hits-FX, Elements, Guitar, Keys, Nature, Piano, Rhythm, Vibraphone and Vocals.

A variety of equipment was used to capture and process the acoustic and synth-based sounds, with close attention being paid to the A/D conversion and each instrument being fed through a Tascam 42NB tape machine for true analogue saturation.

The result of these painstaking processes is a very smooth and warm-sounding library that avoids the digital coldness often found with purely digital processing paths.

The loops and hits themselves range from deep ambient soundscapes and lush pads to haunting vibes, glitch guitars and processed organic-sounding percussion. There are also manipulated sung and spoken vocals and a heartbreakingly beautiful collection of somber piano riffs.

Although a collection of 17 ambient nature FX is included, they are unfortunately too short for film work and would need manipulating to avoid repetition.

It's clear a lot of thought has gone into the individual production of each loop on offer here and the quality is consistently high. If we have a niggle it would be that although there are instrument patches included, these are mostly just linked to loops and it would have been nice to get some playable patches of the lush chords.

Bit overall, despite the somewhat broad and random nature of the content on offer, there is plenty here to inspire both film composers and anyone writing ambient electronic music."

VERDICT: An intricate and beautiful - if slightly random - collection of manipulated chillout loops 8/10.

"Depending on what you are expecting from Soundtrack & Chill there could be a few hit and miss moments. The guitar section for instance has lots of sounds that have been processed in such a way that they no longer sound like guitar loops much (glitchy, stuttery sounds, weird hits and whatnot). Now I'm not saying they sound bad — I personally really like them, but I wouldn't have labeled them guitar loops.

There are also quite a few samples that have audible background noise, especially in the rhythm section with percussion loops that sound like live recordings. It makes the samples more real, authentic & alive to me, but you might also think it's just sloppy recording/production.

On the whole Soundtrack & Chill is stunningly beautiful. From dreamy ethereal beds to sad piano melodies, unique rhythmic loops, tons of useful sound fx, and more.

When it comes to combining loops the large variety of sounds is perhaps a limitation here, as Soundtrack & Chill does not seem to have that same level of flexibility I've come to expect from Sample Magic titles. Or perhaps it's just that it takes more effort to make stuff work in this type of genre, as opposed to something like tech house or minimal which are a lot more loop oriented.

That said, the sounds themselves are great. Inspiring, creative, and well produced. And there is plenty of material that is just screaming to be dropped into your sampler, ready to cross over to other music genres."

Full review here: http://rekkerd.org/review-sample-magic-soundtrack-chill/