Last time I laid my perverted hands on a library from Wave Alchemy was a couple of months back when I got the opportunity to write about their Drum Tools 01 collection of processed drum samples. Since then they have been working on a new library, just released - aimed for the more quirkier and darker side of techno. This time, it's not just drum sounds on the menu, but also loops: drum, bass and synths.

Since I have three nasty deadlines hanging over me, I won't waste any time but get straight to it.

 

 

The library contains three main folders: drum hits, sound effects and wav loops. There are Rex loops as well, but for the sake of clarity I've chosen to forget about them.

Let's start with the drums.

The drum hits folder is divided into kick, snares & claps, hihats, crash cymbals, electronic percussion and world percussion.

Kick: 144
Snare: 48
Clap: 17
Hihats: 37
Crash: 15
Electronic percussion: 196
World percussion: 135
Sound effects: 62
Bass loops: 116
Drum loops: 434
Synth and combi: 104

Total number of single sounds: 654
Total number of loops: 654
Total number of samples: 1308

Tempo: 125, 127 and 130 bpm.

Although Deep Tech and Progressive is not exclusively a drum library, that's were the focal point is. Just look at the kicks - 144 kick drums. While still not in the same caliber as the Vengeance libraries - 144 kick drums is still quite a lot.
Personally - I prefer libraries with smaller amounts of single drum shots. They become easier to handle. But quantity aside, these sounds are excellent.

Although quite processed & compressed, the kicks doesn't require unproportionate amounts of space in the frequency domain. Mainly the kicks are keeping themselves on the lower end of the scale. You can hear some relatives to the the boomy 808 and classic 909, but most of the kicks are in the 'other' category. Electronic. Most of the kicks have a sharp transient click in the beginning - which gives them definition, even if the rest of the kick is as deep at it gets.

The snares are in the same folder as the claps - something I personally find both convenient and logical. As in electronic genres, the border between a clap and a snare is at times diffuse. In total there are 65 sounds here and of them 48 are snares, leaving 17 claps which I felt was a bit on the low side, but that has more to do with my personal fetish for claps over snares.
As with the kicks - top quality all over the range, and the variety is mixed with anything from classic snappiness to electro with odd harmonic layers. I would say that these snares/claps can work for just about any electronic style, not just Deep Tech or Progressive.

The hihat section also features the same mixed approach. After a few Roland-esque hihats, the vast majority can be labeled as electronic hisses and tonal klonks. There is no clear division between open and closed hihats, but since we're only talking about 37 samples - it's not an issue. It's easy enough to find the stuff you want. I liked these samples a lot, and it also shows that in no more than 37 samples you can practically cover most bases from 909 oh's to noisy hisses to more tonal hits.

Moving on to the percussion side of things, you see that this is where the real energy have been put into. The electro and 'world' sounds combined: 331 sounds.

Starting off with the electro-percussion - this collection is a bit like a lost and found category. The usefulness of the sounds are still very high and stretches from electro-congas and toms, to clicks, kick-like sounds (but not entirely), cowbells (yesyes), effects and even synth sounds. 808 and 909 toms and congas make an appearance with quite a few tunings.
On their own - these sound may strike you as what you normally would consider a box of lost and forgotten items - but on top of a foundation of the kicks, snares and hats - these sounds actually set the character of the drums. Since there are not so many assembled drum kits (complaint on this coming further on) I spend ten-fifteen minutes assembling my own kits. Starting with the kick, I added snares and hihats as I seemed fit - as the last stage I added the percussion elements, by programming a percussion line in Guru while the rest of the drums were playing. Then I was flipping through the percussion sounds until I found something that matched. Without going religious - many drum parts doesn't lift off until you've set the percussion - no matter how delicate, it's often there the track get's its attitude and soul.
The 'world' percussive sounds are synthesized imitations of real world percussion sounds - which actually is extremely cool. I don't know how many libraries I've been listening to where they've included acoustic percussion to an otherwise very synthetic library. For a limited number of sounds - it works, but essentially you're no longer playing in the same sound arena. Here, the sounds have the groovy sliding feelings with waterdrums, djembes and atonal qualities inspired by eastern percussion, but still have  clear synthetic edge.

There were many things I liked about the sound effects. They sound original and keep well into the definitions of the library. While processed - they still feel quite clean. There are no booming reverbs or endless delays, something that I found quite relieving. Although the reverb + delay combo (in that order to be exact) is a weakness of mine, in many cases it actually sounds better without. Here, you at least get the option. The variety of sounds span from wobbly dark soundscapes, to up & downsweeps and assorted computer-ish noises. Good good good.

Moving on to the bass loops - these loops were the first thing that surprised me since I was expecting classic basslines and booming subbasses. Well, there are a lots of those as well, but in all honesty I found these loops to be, quite odd. Many of them consists of only one tone with a fair amount of processing. Dark, quirky and... odd. I wouldn't go so far to say this is as far away from pop you can get, but it's like you're walking in a snowy pine forest and suddenly you see a herd of giraffes galloping by. It's not exactly what you expect. Although I might personally classify some of them as effects - the quality is outstanding, and I can't do anything else than applaud Wave Alchemys balls to create such a weird collection of loops. Weird, cool, earcatching. Useful? Probably. I am not sure. But still. Very very cool.

Drum loops: let's start with the good stuff. They're good. If you're into that darkish underground vibe of Deep Tech, these score equal Ben & Jerrys, Mövenpick or Häagen-Dazs after a good dinner. Mainly these are four-fours but still sound astonishingly fresh, which means you don't fall into the four-on-the-floor-coma. The programming is clever - but obviously that is just a part of the explanation - even a simple loop with just a four-four kick and a hat on every second and fourth sounds great. Although I don't consider myself as a beginner programming loops - I cannot even touch these guys kung-fu.
My only complaints here regards the structure - I know some people disagree with me here, but I think it's a bit of a waste offering three tempos so close to each other: 125, 127 and 130 bpm.
Among the loops are both full loops and kick-less loops. Sadly there are no indications telling you which loops are kick-less and which aren't.

Lastly, the synth and combi loops is as disorganized as the drum loops - only here it's a bit more confusing. Some of the loops are plain and normal synth loops/stabs/chords - but some of them have other element in them. In many cases this is not a problem, but when you've found a nice mellow synth background and there is a hihat playing on top of it, and there is no alternative variations, I get a bit grumpy.
The style swings from dark and moody, to bright and moody. From blippy to smeared soundscapes. It's a bit like the experimental backbone of the bass loops.

Sampler patches only contains drum sounds collected in neat packages such as all claps & snares, all kicks, but there are a handful - not too many though - kits compiled with the sounds from the collection.

Deep Tech and Progressive is a very fine sample library, well up to par of the Drum Tools 01, but it's also the first product from Wave Alchemy I got a feeling of disappointment. Qualitywise - all is lovely. But I do miss single tonal sounds - a lot. Especially as many of the synth sounds are quite nifty.

Complaining mode on? You bet. One thing that I do miss with many producers of libraries these days is the breakdown of loops. Example: they give you the full loop in all it's glory, plus the loops of the individual sounds plus the individual sounds as well. While I rarely rely on drum loops - I do tend to use them if they capture the sound and feeling I'm after. What I usually do is trying to re-compile the sounds - something that takes loads and loads of time. Something that would be so easily solved by producers, simply keeping to uniform naming. The loop 128-Buckled could be built up by Snare-Buckled, Kick-Buckled, Tom-Buckled and of course the Cowbell-Buckled.

<Sigh> One can dream.

Conclusion
Deep Tech and Progressive is truly impressive library. As with Drum Tools 01 - Wave Alchemy have a certain taste and style for processing, and with this library they really show their talents in their drum programming skills. But the library isn't without flaws, especially the omission of single synth and bass sounds, which actually was a disappointment for me. And I can't for the world understand why they didn't include hihat-free versions of some of the synth loops. But apart from that - the library is top notch. Inspiring & well produced. Go get.

 

Wave Alchemy Deep Tech and Progressive
Web: www.wavealchemy.co.uk.
Price: 40 british pounds (download).
Good: Amazingly good drum sounds and loops. The bass loops are experimental and very cool.
Bad: No single tonal sounds. Some of the synth loops have percussive elements in them.

Review copy: thumbs up to Wave Alchemy for NFR review copy.