When it comes to sound libraries for dance music (where dance music is spelled Popular Dance Music Intended For Clubs) there are a few safe cards. Vengeance, Sample Magic, Loopmasters and of course the german label Sounds of Revolution. Behind this label is a fellow called Oliver Schmitt who have been around long enough to earn himself a reputation of being a sound designer worth counting on. His library Kick Free Revolution 2 is basically a collection of drum loops without kicks. Kick-free loops, aka top loops, have been around for ages. Its purpose and function is genial. While a normal drum loop might inspire - it's limited what you can do with it. By just taking out the kick, you open up for more manipulation and editing and you'll get the pleasure for adding your own kick. Some people say Kick-free loops are like instant noodles and in a way they are. By themselves they are pretty dull, but add eggs and some vegetables and you have something nice. Me personally is a huge fan of kick-free loops so when Sounds/To/Sample announced the release of Oliver Schmitt latest offering, I couldn't resist taking it for a spin.

Kick Free Revolution 2 by ze numbers:

Total size: 1,43 gigabyte (including all formats)
Total number of files: 2335 (excluding demos)
Tempo: 127 bpm

Included in this are Apple Loops, Rex and Wav, so it's fair to say that the material in this library is about 450 megabyte and contains around 600+ files.

The library is divided into eleven folders: clicks, club, detail and glitch, FX, hihat, kick - bonus, layered, perc, rough, tonal and tribal. I won't go into the discussion about naming categories again, but this library has pretty good descriptive names. But - well, it doesn't really matter. As I've always said, a good loop is a good loop, even when filed under Smurf-Rock-loops.

Going through all folders and describing all their contents would only end up in massive repetition, as the material often are similar and sometimes are overlapping each other. Just a few words on the contents though:

Clicks contains loops of a hihat-ish scratchy record kind of style. Light, short and quite sparse with events which I liked a lot. They add to the groove without stealing attention from other parts of the song.

The Detail & Glitch folder contains material which didn't strike me as particularly glitchy. Instead Oliver Schmitt have used his skills to create some odd rhythms that doesn't reveal their groove until you've nailed a four-on-the-floor kick the loop can relate to. The sounds are difficult to categorize, as they doesn't contain the normal hats and percussion elements. These sounds are more of a synthetic nature.

The FX loops sort of takes over from the Glitch sounds and are of a very synthetic nature. The loops are bigger and demands more attention. These loops are perfect to create shorter breaks with - for example, one classic trick to keep interest while having two verses after each other, is to create a micro-break between the two parts. A few seconds where you bring something totally new to the listener. Although you probably could get away with creating a whole song based on any of these loops, their strength lies in careful use.

As one can expect, Club contains loops aimed for the dance floor. The loops are noticeably more busy with hihats, snares and assorted percussion processed with gates, sidechaining, distortion and sometimes even resonant filters to create a wow/wah-sort of effect. While not bad, this collection of loops didn't do much to me. In all fairness, there were a couple of loops that made me interested - but most of them just wanted me to move along.

The Hihat loops consists of hihats, shakers and the occasional percussion element. While there are a fair amount of processing going on - mostly sidechaining and filters - these loops sounds like regular top loops. These loops are not sparse, but not bombastic either. They are mainly hihats with different rhythmical patterns. Bread and butter - but good bread and butter.

The contents of the Layered loops is probably what most people think about when talking about kick-free loops. These loops are all the way from sparse to busy and contains classic elements such as hats and percussion. No wild experimentation here, but good solid patterns. If I were to create a club tune I would look for my inspiration here or in the hihats section, rather than in the Club-loops. This category contains some of the highlights in this collection.

As I said earlier, the different categories is an indicator or how pronounced a style is - and this gets more apparent with the percussion and tribal loops. Basically they all are percussion loops but while the percussion category has a focus towards electronic percussive elements - the tribal category has more real sounding elements, such as bongos and congas. But still - the tribal category is processed quite heavily so it has that hi-tech/low-tech shimmer.

There are also 70 additional kick drums that comes with the library. While the kicks are fairly standard and I would assume most people have their fair share of kicks in their personal libraries, it's nice to have them around. And naturally they work well together with the loops. The only real criticism from my part is that the kicks sometimes have been layered with a high sounding hat or clickish sound. I prefer as clean kicks as possible, but that is my own personal taste.

Conclusion
Kick Free Revolution 2 is a good collection of loops that you can use to quickly spiff up your tracks. All in all, this collection offers a nice balance of traditional kick-free loops and slightly more experimental material. While the classic kick-less loops walks pretty much in the middle of the road, that is not a bad thing. Good hihat/percussion patterns have worked wonders in all time of modern music and will continue be in high demand. The highlights of this collection is when Oliver Schmitt is exploring minimalistic grooves and is playing around with odd time signatures - that's when you forget that you're listening to a sample library and start producing just by sheer pleasure. The only low mark was with the club loops. For me, they simply didn't strike home. The strength of this collection lies in its odd and sparsely programmed rhythms, of which many are powerful enough to inspire you.

Sounds of Revolution Kick Free Revolution 2
Web: www.sounds-of-revolution.com
Price: 47 euro for download.
Good: Good, original material which spans from classic dance music hihat/percussion patterns to the odd (but not too odd) and fresh.
Bad: No big critisism here.

Review copy: thanks to Sounds/To/Sample for NFR review copy.