John Fleming, also known as JOOF, is a music producer who have been making club music for around twenty years, which is - in all honesty - quite some time. During twenty years - most people have time to either change style completely or they become illuminated audio kung-fu masters. I honestly don't know how deep John Flemings kung-fu really goes, but after watching an interview with him in a recent issue of Computer Music, J has all my respect. Production-wise, he has that rare discipline to keep a focused mind and not get lost in a production while still having a great deal of fun. Or to put it in fewer words: The Man Knows.

I've always liked Loopmasters, but since the introduction of their artist series - I felt them take a huge step forward in both quality and innovation. Very few of the releases in the artist series have let my expectations down. Well maybe except for the Harley & Muscle library which wasn't that bad, but felt weak compared with the masters of low-tempo house: Equipped Music. So it was with great anticipation I picked up the latest addition to the Loopmasters artist series.

By the 00 Digital(s)
Loopmasters are well known for their extremely well structured libraries, and I more or less take this as a standard when reviewing sample libraries these days. Every thing is mapped out in an über-clear fashion. Original tempo, key plus in many cases a descriptive name, and they are available in almost every format known to man and samplers. The balance of drums, bass and melodic sounds/loops is very good - especially the drum section made me overjoyed: 57 single drum hits. Yes yes yes! It doesn't have to be more than this. Big ovations to the Loopmasters camp for this. The tempo is fast uptempo and moves safely between 133 and 145 bpms. Let's break it down by the numbers.

Audio Loops
Bass: 60
Drums: 76
Synth and pad: 101
Size: 740 megabyte

Rex Loops
Bass: 64
Drums: 87
Synth and pad: 123
Size: 277 megabyte

Single sounds
Bass: 24 (8)
Effects and atmospheric sounds: 73
Pad and strings: 38
Synth: 107 (23)
Single drum hits: 57

Drum hits
Kick: 30
Snare: 3
Clap: 4
Hihat: 10
Crash: 10

Total single sounds: 299
Total audio loops: 237
Total rex loops: 274
Total size: 1017 megabyte

Everybody loves singles
Let's start with the singles and the drums. It's quite clear that J & DB are two seriously confident producers. Instead of collecting hundreds of kicks and snares and give the choice to the user - they have done it for you. They have selected 57 drum hits of what they think is enough - and 30 of them are kicks. This makes choosing drums quick and easy. The style of the drums have - of course - its roots in the Roland TR-909 but they have been processed, tuned and formed so they don't feel washed out. Actually - they feel slightly invisible. Not smack in your face. No blasters set on Deep Fry. The point of this is clear - the drums should not steal attention from the music, but rather provide a deep, steady beat. Another good thing about this, is that they also leave room for your own improvements. You can add a compressor to add some extra punch or saturation without fearing the sounds will distort at slightest touch.
Although my own personal taste for drums leans towards more breakbeat style of drums, these drums easy qualify as one of the better electronic bread & butter kits as I've come across.

The single bass sounds gave me the first taste of disappointment. It's not that the quality is less than what to expect - quite the opposite. The sounds follow the same confident attitude as with the drums. The sounds are fairly standard. By that I don't mean that we're talking about straight, boring, sawtooth-basses here - but rather that they don't demand too much attention. When listening to them, you can clearly hear that there are thought behind the sounds - small variations in pitch, slightly detuned oscillators, layered bass sounds and so on. No - the reason for my disappointment is that there are too few sounds. Way too few. At a first glance, there are 24 bass sounds in the bass folder - but as many of the sounds are the same but sampled in different pitches - you are actually only left with eight(!) different bass sounds, which is almost torture for any serious bass addict such as myself.

Over to the effects. Compared with Vengeance - whom I consider to be one of the best producers of audio effects for dance music - Fleming and Blonde does very well. Although they aren't as bombastic as the sound effects from Vengeance - but they are full of drama and effectively adds dynamic and anticipation to any track. The most of the sounds are buildups, impacts drenched in reverb or krunchy weird effects, and there are - thankfully - very few analog UFO-style effects.

The pads and synth strings are very long. Although most of the samples here are around 15-30 seconds long - there are sounds that are 40 seconds or even longer. While long samples captures small evolving nuances, it also makes it easy to actually play with the samples. In other words, it's not a problem with playing these sounds with a long release tail and you don't need to bother finding a good looping point. The sounds in this section are generally huge and contains lots of tension - with the occasional classical synth string sound.

The synth sound section has the same "problem" as with the bass. While there are 107 single samples - there are only 23 different sounds. While I certainly applaud the effort to make each and every sound as playable as possible in samplers - 23 sounds just feels too damn little. While I can excuse Loopmasters/Fleming/Blonde for missing out on the bass sounds - bass is after all a perversion of mine - this is harder to forgive. Trance is based around melody - the melody and the lead sound is closely tied together.
Back to the actual sounds. Trance is larger than skreechy massively detuned sawtooths and 00 Fleming and Digital Blonde knows this. I would describe the sounds as a mix between typical trance sounds and classic synth sounds. Although well programmed and of high quality, they are not massive walls of sound, which I find quite refreshing.

The loops - instant gratification
Instead of the usual full-on complete drum packages - the loops here are a) mainly without kicks, and b) usually only contain very few percussive elements, such as hihats, toms, claps or percussion. This approach is not as immediately gratifying as complete drum loops - but are way more useful. Have you ever been working on a track and you just don't seem to get the hihats right - of course you have. Collections of loops like this offer some quick solutions and more importantly - it doesn't feel like cheating too much by using them, as if you're using complete loops with kick, snare, hats, percussion and all other prefab-mojo.

The synth and bass loops are also of high quality - both in terms of sound but also in terms of usability. How irritating isn't it when you find a nice loop just to find it's been utterly drenched in effects that just don't fit your track? Not so with this library. First of all - the effects used are generally quite sparse, and secondly - many of the loops come in both dry and wet versions. And on top of that, many of the loops come in multiple variations so you can use the loops without risking the loops render themselves invisible after a while. Truly great.

Conclusion
If I should try to shortly describe this library, I would say it's minimalistic in the sense that there are very little fat, in both he selection of sounds and how they sound. There are no endless lists of kicks of all possible flavors - or modular squeaking UFO effects that nobody uses anyway. As with the sampling library from Coldcut - John 00 Fleming and Digital Blonde provide you with a library with a very high percentage of useable sounds. You quickly understand that this is a duo of producers who know what they are doing and they keep true to their style. It's trance, but trance with a analog, laid-back feeling. It's not full of heavily detuned samples that sounds like everything else - and as a trance library that is really something.
The only real criticism I have, is that it is a little bit short on the single bass and synth sounds. Now - I am quite sure that you already have loads of bass and synth sounds, but with this collection, you want more. But considering its very attractive price, this is a library that is very difficult to resist. So why  try? Recommended.

Loopmasters John 00 Fleming and The Digital Blonde - Variations in Trance
Web: Loopmasters.
Price: 38 Euros.
Good: Both the drum loops and the single drumhits are very useful. The effects are massive and contains lots of drama. Inexpensive.
Bad: Too few bass and synth sounds.