Five years ago I honestly thought that the loudness war was at it’s absolute peak. I am a naïve boy – obviously. Electro and modern trance came with that wall-like sound - more denser and condensed than I’ve ever heard before.

To be honest - I’m not a great opponent of overusing compressors. I think there are times when it’s appropriate and times when you should back off. And although I give both thumbs up for electro as a genre – it’s a genre that seriously tires my ears and my brain. It’s like each and every track is a three-year-old child jumping and screaming hysterically for maximal attention.

When I was compiling together my section on the hottest sample libraries for one of the magazines I write for, I came across a dance library that quickly caught my ear – and later, my lust for making music.

Progressive Tech House & Electro Vol 1 builds on the popular construction kit form and contains almost everything from the individual samples to entire loops with full processing. The only stuff I found was missing was some drum sounds from the percussive loops – but it’s not a big thing really, since the library is so thorough in all other respects, such as including the MIDI files and the majority of the tonal sounds come as multisamples so you can re-create the sounds fairly well.

Click here to listen to the demo.

What I like about this library is the sound. It got that modern sound but without that hysterical attention-seeking vibe, so common these days. The first word that jumped into my head was: smooth.

The second thing I liked was that the amount of sounds actually is quite limited. Sure, there are some 1100 audio files and the total size is over two gigabytes (including all formats) – but it’s not a mixed bag, and all loops can be traced back to the included multisamples and one-shots. After I distilled the most important sounds and converted them to my MPC – I didn’t have more than 50 sounds – and from a creative point of view, that is absolutely not a bad thing.

CONCLUSION
I like Progressive Tech House & Electro Vol 1 a lot. It gives you all the tools you need to make good sounding dance music – from the most fundamental MIDI loops to already processed loops. But what I like most about it is the fact that it manages to sound modern without being too much in your face.

Producer Loops Progressive Tech House & Electro Vol 1
Web: www.producerloops.com.
Price: 24.95 pounds.
Good: Large library with a clear focus, MIDI-files, good vibe.
Bad: Nothing really.

Review copy: thanks to Producer Loops for NFR.