Whatever your personal thoughts about how catchy or cheesy disco might be - there is no way of denying it. The impact of disco on what we today call pop is fundamental. No matter what you think about the music of Bee Gees, Chic, Donna Summer & Giorgio Moroder - just load up any production by Stock, Aitken and Waterman and you'll clearly hear which path disco took since the middle of the 70s. The question poses itself naturally, if you're into pop, what better way is there to go back to its roots?

This is just what the latest offering from Zero-G have done with its Disco Gold library. Disco Gold is the sequel to the 2007 title Classic Disco and spans over 800 samples and 1,7 gigabyte. At the core of the collection is 34 construction kits that contains all elements neatly separated: besides that all instruments come as separate audio files (including the drums) every construction kit also come with complete backing tracks withouts drums. Besides the construction kits there are also a decent amount of extra loops of guitar, bass, acoustic/electric piano, synth and synth bass.

You want numbers? You get numbers.

Loops:

Drums (full): 34 (plus 14 variations)
Drums (parts): 175 (plus 22 variations)
Bass: 74 (plus 26 variations)
Synth: 61 (plus 27 variations)
Electric piano: 54 (plus 25 variations)
Acoustic piano: 34 (plus 10 variations)
Strings: 14 (plus 11 variations)
Guitar: 66 (plus 59 variations)
Brass: 8 (plus 6 variations)
Flute: 1

Total size: 4.59 GB (including all formats)
Total number of files: 2753 (excluding demos)
Tempo: 105-125 BPM

While the form of construction kits is very usable, loop libraries are also tricky. Many users - myself included - love the straightforwardness of them, but can't shake the feeling of cheating. In one respect, using this form of material is in one way nothing else than (quote Sample Magic) 'join the dots' music production, which is the safest way for me to lose my creative spark. It just feel so damn boring. While that is by far the most negative way of viewing a product in this format - it's not the entire truth. Thankfully. Nobody stops you from actually doing something clever with the loops. Developing them further so to speak - or just get enough influence and inspiration from them. These days when we are blessed with elastic audio in form of Melodyne Editor and the like - there are in all honesty quite a lot you can do with this material. It's recorded quite clean which make further tweaking easy. Another perspective that also is of importance is when mixing styles. I don't know how many libraries I heard in my life that tried to combine house and disco and none of them did it well. Here you have a seriously good collection of loops that have been created with both knowledge and love. At the end, this is the ultimate reason why it's would be outright foolish to diss Disco Gold just because it's 100 percent based on loops: it's a damn fine package.

The tempo of the construction kits is a little higher than we usually see in disco libraries. Here the tempo moves between 105 and 125, which is not an accident. The sound of the loops are uptempo feelgood with a large dose of 80s in it. Actually, there were times when I wondered if this wasn't the Ultimate 80s Collection where you can practice your Popping and Locking (watch this and remember why the 80s must never be forgotten nor forgiven). Yes - my initial thought about this library was that it was a clean library for all disco lovers out there - but I soon came to realize that while this indeed is disco, there are moments that could have been taken from Paula Abduls debut album, Beverly Hills Cop or anything from the SAW-trio, really.

As I mentioned, all construction kits come with all the tracks separated, but does also come in collections, such as complete drum loops and complete backing tracks without drums. The inclusion of backing tracks are the highest form of pre-chewed material - from a musicians point of view. But from a media producer who are working on a webpage, anything for the radio or tv - these pre-fabbed loops fixes the vibe in a few clicks.

Personally, I liked the brass and the pianos best in the collection - and also the synth riffs. The guitars are great and are working well within their context - but one would have wished for slight more variation in their sound. No big deal though. They do sound great.
The sounds have been processed, but the processing is gentle. It's nowhere near the square-wave compression that's (still) so popular these days. The loops have been processed with effects as well, but they too are sparse. Usually just a touch of reverb or delay.

The only time when I felt a bit let down was when checking out the Kontakt instruments. Besides the Acid/Apple Loops/Rex loops Disco Gold also comes with 43 instruments in either Kontakt/Reason NN-XT or EXS24 formats - and I was hoping for a handful of electric basses, light pianos, fast strings and maybe even some drum kits. But no. The instruments here only includes the loops. While Zero-G have been doing this for years, I can't say I'm a big fan of it. Playable instruments are worth a lot, especially when it comes to loop collections.

Conclusion
Disco Gold is a library with a focus on loops and construction kits, and although that is both a blessing and a curse, the quality of the material is as good as it gets. The vibe is genuine, encouraging and uplifting. I cannot think of any better library for Disco, and if you're into giving your tracks a bit of white leisure-suit sweat and a big dose of the 80s - this is it. Very cool stuff indeed. If there would have been a couple of playable instruments as well, this library would have been perfect.
While not entirely comparable, I would say that if you were looking for alternatives to Marshall Jeffersons House Generation libraries, then I would most definitely use this library and team it up with some next generation house library. As I said, not exactly the same. But close to the right street.

Zero-G Disco Gold
Web: www.zero-g.co.uk / www.timespace.com (worldwide distributor).
Price: 80 UK pounds (dvd).
Good: High quality. Inspirational loops. Also doubles extra as a 80s library.
Bad: There are only loops in this collection. It would have been great with a few playable instruments.

Review copy: thanks to Zero-G and Time & Space for NFR review copy.