Goldbaby Tape-101 review: with Tape-101, the Roland SH-101 gets treated by Goldbabys tape decks and analogue gear, which gives a new edge to the old bass synthesizer.

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Hugo Tichborne, aka Goldbaby, is a guy from New Zeeland who loves tape. In fact, Hugo likes tape so much that he has started his own business, recording old electronic instruments onto tape, importing the whole lot into the computer, cutting them up and saving them as samples into a variety of formats. Goldbabys taped-up samples of old drum machines - of course including the TR909 and TR808 - but also drum boxes such as the Böhm, Korg KPR-77 and the Boss DR-110 – have gained quite some stir by both press and users. By recording the instruments to 1/4-inch and old cassette decks with by various degrees of saturation, the sounds get a coating that feels fresh in an old fashioned kind of way (nice paradox there). Another way of describing the sound would be Crunchy.
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Drumdrops A Fistful of Drummers review: Looking for some real drums to bring some life into your tracks? A Fistful of Drummers fits the bill nicely if you are looking for soulful and funky sounds of the 70s.

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More or less since day one when, drums have been the hottest target of the sample CD creators. And it's no wonder why. Instead of buying yourself a real 909 - you spend a few lousy Euros/Dollars on a sample library and you have something that is almost as good. The same thing goes for acoustic drums - instead of miking up and recording a real drum kit, you buy a bunch of pre-fixed samples. Or if you can't play drums - you buy loops, or recordings of a real drummer banging on real drums.
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Sonalksis TBK3 review: The TBK3 is a compressor unlike any other. If you have a fetish for anything that sounds hard this compressor is exactly what you are looking for.

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From a structured point of view, creating music is a two-stage process. We have the creative phase where the actual material is created, and there is the production phase, where the material gets shaped and improved.

In my opinion one of the keys of successful music making (and here I use the word successful as in creating material of good quality) is to have a clear distinction between the two phases. There is nothing more effective to kill a creative session than spending time looking for that perfect setting for the compressor – or that perfect kick drum. It's an instant sleeping pill. The gourmets should hold their horses until the production phase. Creating is about generating new material.
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