Oliver Schmitt aka Sounds of Revolution is on a roll. Not only is his label Sounds of Revolution distributed by Mutekki Media who helped make Vengeance into fame, but lately he's got Tiesto, Timo Maas and Adam Beyer among his fans. When it comes to endorsement of famous artists in the same genre as yourself, for me it's hard not to become suspicious. All it takes is a photo of the artist smiling broadly next to the product, and at the next moment he's trotting off with a bag full of money to receive a truckload of free gear. But when it comes to endorsement for a sample library - even during my darkest and most cynical moments I simply cannot imagine Maas, Tiesto or Beyer not to afford a sample library for 80 euros.
So no. For once I set aside my ideas of sinister conspiracy theories and accept that they actually dig the stuff. Which is not hard to believe anyway. Once you start to listen to it. As the title suggests, this library has a clear direction. After my initial listen I would personally mark this library as proper techno. Not pop, no trance, no endless carpets of evolving pads. It's hard, at times clinical and sparse - there are no trendy supersaws in here. In other words, this is a library for the producer who a new fresh platform to create techno with.

The package is divided into four parts: wav, apple loops, rex and Kontakt Monolith. In this test I'm only focusing on the wav files which spans over one gigabyte and almost 2200 files. Let's break down the pack into its numbers:

WAV

Bass sounds: 93
Bass loops: 58
Claps: 36
Classic percussion: 93
Hihat closed: 63
Hihat open: 71
Ride: 21
Crash: 25
Drum loops: 589
Electro stuff (percussive sounds): 161
Fragment: 128
Kicks: 130
Percussion: 122
Effect - atmos: 24
Effect - granular: 29
Effect - oneshot: 73
Effect - processed live rec: 56
Effect - reverse: 30
Effect - sweep: 20
Shaker: 32
SID (percussive sounds): 74
Snare: 141
Synth sounds: 27
Synth loops: 46
Tom: 30

Total drum sounds: 1127
Total tonal sounds: 139
Total effect sounds: 232

Total drum loops: 589
Total tonal loops: 104

Total single sounds: 1498
Total loops: 693

Total files: 2191

Tempo: 127 bpm

REX (the same numbers goes for the Apple Loops as well)

Bass loops: 58
Drum loops: 589
Synth loops: 46


It takes just a few moments to realize that Minimal Techno Revolution is a library heavy on the drums. Of all 2191 sounds there are less than a fourth of the space that is dedicated to something else than drums. Speaking generally here, while I do appreciate libraries with a developed section for drums, I feel that most libraries today don't have a balance between drums and non-percussive sounds. Without going into the details about the quality of this library, I cannot help myself from thinking that a few more tonal sounds wouldn't have hurt. 1127 single drum sounds vs. 139 tonal sounds. Or to put it more plainly: me wants more. Actually much more.

But let's focus on what Minimal Techno Revolution is, instead of going into detail of what it isn't, and the best place to do that is with the drum loops. The drum loops are set to the Sound of Revolution household tempo of 127 bpm and are divided into five categories: Click, Drum Kits, Experim, Hihat and Perc. Most of the loops are free from kicks (although the category Drum Kits have the occational loop with kick) and if you have been using any of loops from their Kick Free Revolution libraries, you'll feel yourself right at home.

These loops quickly erased my initial grumpiness regarding the amount of drums: we are talking about seriously high quality loops here. If I were to describe them, I would say they continue the path laid out from the Kick Free Revolution series but with a more defined direction. These loops are usually quite sparse and aren't filled to the brim of events. Some of the loops only contain a few events and some of these as few as two or three. But it works great: the sounds are placed in well thought out places and leaves room for the swing and other instruments to breathe. If you've ever cursed yourself for making your beats too action-packed - this is the remedy. This is of the best collection of kick-free loops I've heard in a long long time.

In a mail conversation with Oliver himself, he told me he rarely program his loops with snares, as the snare decreases the flexibility of a loop. I never thought about this before Oliver brought this up, but I think he is spot on and this is probably the secret why these loops are so usable: they doesn't just lack kick, but snare as well.

The sounds in the loops are well processed and although you at times can sense that a hat or tom once came from a 909, these loops feel fresh in terms of sound. For example, among the hihats patterns you can sometimes smell the origin of the electro-ish hihats of the 808 - but they won't leave you thinking "this is a nice 808 hihat loop". It's more like Oliver Schmitt has captured the fundamentals of the sounds and use them just enough to create a good mix of old and new. I'm not sure if this latest paragraph make any sense - so I fall back on the conclusion I made earlier: they feel fresh but not too experimental.

Interestingly, many of these loops come in a couple additional variations, which as always is highly useful when creating more complex arrangements. While the loops themselves stretch all the way from minimalistic clicky percussive sounds to hihat patterns, Oliver Schmitt gets it right almost every time. The only negative thing I can say about the loops is regarding their structure: there is no way of seeing which loops belong to one another in terms of variations - the loops are usually just named with a number, such as SOR MTR1 DL Drum Kits 127 001 and so on, while that isn't a deal-breaker in any way, it would have been more convenient with some more clarity.

Moving from the drum loops, looking more closely at the individual drum hits we have all the usual suspects in place: kick, snare, hats, cymbals, toms - but also quite a lot on the percussive side. In fact there are four folders containing percussive sounds of various styles.

The classic percussion folder contains - as one might expect - quite normal percussive samples, such as toms, zaps, clicks, claves and rimshots. The sounds doesn't feel like reused Rolands in absurdum but have a quality of their own.
Electro stuff contains zaps and percussive sounds with more beef than the previous category. Actually, this folder is sort of a mixed bag. Some of the sounds here are very close to short one-shot effects, some are almost what I would call synth-stabs and some are almost hihats and cymbals.
The percussion category contains tom-ish sounds and Fragments contains minimal percussion sounds - very short sounds on the border of transients.

Toms are a personal passion of mine - and while the toms here has a nice combination of electro-toms and processed toms from the 909 - I must say I felt they didn't feel as fresh as the other material in this library. I expected a larger quantity and slightly more creative processing.

The kicks were a pleasant surprise in a couple of ways. Firstly, we're not presented with a 500+ kicks folder but rather a selection of 130 kicks. The kicks themselves span from dance floor to minimalistic connoisseur productions. but the emphasis is for the dance floor. Sometimes the kicks are layered with another elements such as hihats or shakers - I personally don't like this kind of layering - but that's something that gets filed under personal taste.

The snares are mainly constructed by layering with everything from hihats to claps and sometimes the line between snares and claps sometimes gets blurry. By themselves, the snares are good, but didn't blew my mind in any way. This is a set of very usable snare sounds but doesn't give us anything we haven't heard before.
The claps are are a different matter though. With less than 40 samples in this category, there is a much tighter selection and pretty much covers anyones needs. The claps are a lot cleaner than the snares (in terms of layering).

The cymbal section covers hihats, crashes and rides and while the samples themselves might sound familiar, they're more ingenious than they seem. Generally speaking, the closed and open hihats are fairly laidback in the sense they don't demand too much attention - which is a very good thing. Hihats that sound like a Ufo accidentally landing in a meat grinder is cool, but rarely useful. These are. The crashes and rides however, demands more space and attention - as they should. I particularly liked the crashes - and although you sometimes can hear the origin of a 909 crash - they feel fresh.

It's worth pointing out that these drum sounds are sorted into their respective folders. Unfortunately, there are no pre-compiled drum sets of the available sounds. I bring this up not because this library missed out on a common feature - unfortunately most creators sample libraries miss out on this. Assembling drum sets is an art and is a great service for customers - especially with sample libraries with hundreds of individual drum sounds.

A nice surprise is the SID folder which contains Commodore 64-esque 8 bit drum samples which broadens the sound and feeling of this library in a nice way. These samples well compliment the sounds of the rest of the library.

Leaving the drum sounds, next stop is the bass and synth sounds. Of the tonal sounds, the synth sounds are by far the most uninspired ones. Firstly there are only 26 of them, secondly the contents range from tonal synthesizer sounds to effect-like sounds and what I would mark as basses. The overall quality is decent - but in my opinion not that much to get excited about. As a sound designer myself, I assume that the true passion for Oliver Schmitt does not lie with making synth sounds - but with drums. Although the bass samples doesn't contain any radically new in terms of sound - the collection of almost 100 bass samples is a good one and contains a lot of very usable bass sounds with origins from the analog world as well as the hardness of FM.

The effects are seriously good and are on par with the rest of the library in terms of sound. The atmospheres are for example generally on the darker side - brooding, serious and paranoid - and the one-shots have a clear tech edge. The live recorded sounds quickly became my favorites. These snippets of giggles, zippers and doors shutting have been processed in a very clever way so have a feeling of being half real - half synthetic. Brilliant stuff.

As with the single synth sounds the tonal synth loops doesn't really match the high standards of the rest of the library - or as I put it earlier: they feel uninspired. Again, the bass loops are much more interesting. The bass sounds work perfectly with the rest of the library and Oliver Schmitt is putting his penchant for off-beat rhythms, something that works very well with bass lines.

Conclusion
If you're out for a large selection of kick-free loops that registers themselves on the harder side of the scale, I can't think of anything better than Minimal Techno Revolution right now. The skills of Oliver Schmitt when it comes to drum loops are considerable and he truly masters the art of creating sparse and highly intelligent loops that both inspires and leaves room for your own drum sounds, which is a rare combination. On the whole, a very good library for anyone who needs to get back to the true soul of techno.

Sounds of Revolution Minimal Techno Revolution
Web: www.sounds-of-revolution.com
Price: 80 euro for download.
Good: Fantastic kick/snare-free loops. The effects are well selected and feel fresh. Good selection of drums.
Bad: The synthesizer sounds and loops feels a little uninspired.

Review copy: thanks to Sounds of Revolution for NFR review copy.