AMG
SAMPLOGRAPHY ••••½

Plenty to review for you this month, and very good some of it is too. First off the blocks comes a new release from AMG. 'Samplography' (AMG £49) tells the story of 1980s/90s pop music as seen through the S1100 of Pete Gleadall, who has worked with George Michael, Sly and Robbie, and the Pet Shop Boys. This time Matt from AMG has got it about right: the sleeve is tasteful and the liner notes are both relevant and accurate.

Pete warns us that some samples are not without noise, distortion etc. He needn't have bothered. This set is one of the cleanest I've heard. God knows what he would have made of some of the competition!

Opening the CD is a smoothie demo that illustrates how a few of the samples can be used to create an immaculate production. While not quite my cup of çay (alright Wilf, you've been honeymooning in Turkey, we've been stuck in England; don't rub it in — Ed.), this piece should not be compared to the meaningless drivel that emanates from most multi-timbral expanders when you press ROM play. It is impressive, giving one an immediate and not misleading impression that sample quality must be about as good as it gets.

The samples kick off with some well tidy brass hits, runs and notes in (almost too) rapid succession. Not off D record this lot: rather they have been gorgeously recorded in stereo. Funky guitars follow, acoustic strumming, a twin peaks tremelo chord bend, more funk, then a power fifth, some delicate stuff, a looped multisample clean set, acoustic, power, tremelo. All good stuff but, as you can deduce from the chronology, not presented in a particularly helpful order. Towards tracks 9, 10 and 11 we find stock distorted guitars. Up to scratch, but similar examples are well distributed among the sampling brethren already. A nice set of sustained chords, acoustic notes, chops, etc. and we're onto track 12. Enter the mighty Hammond. Wonderful swirls, licks and notes, 39 in all.

Track 15 sports live strings: solo close mono multi-samples, spicato and sustained. Dry but moody. 16 holds S900 strings; bread and butter stuff. 17 has strikes, tremelonde, plus other bits and bobs. 18 contains a selection of loops, drums, and some percussion, recorded at Moody Studios using two mics in a live but viable room. 19 has 'Parliament' drums, a mix of loops, singles and hits. The 'Jazz Drums' of track 20 took my fancy. If I wasn't living in the middle of a building site at the moment I'd have this lot into my S770 post haste. As it is, my disk drives would definitely not appreciate a light coating of plaster dust.

Drums take us all the way through to track 33, whereupon we are assailed by percussion hits and loops. Once again most samples are specially (or digitally) recorded, though a few have been lifted from analogue multitrack (witness the tape crosstalk). Whoops... a lovely ambient triangle just went by: check out track 37. There are some rogues in amongst this lot (strikes, hi-hat loops etc.), but they are fairly loveable. What little synth work there is here, I liked. (Incidentally, there are, here and elsewhere, useful little footnotes with sampling hints.)

Moving on to track 42, reggae bass and drums precede some more interesting basses, though the licks and pops would have to be used with caution. 45 to 49 include Roland JD800, MKS and Juno basses. Track 45 is called 'Cone The Destroyer', and should be approached with caution.

50 to 54 are synth pulses, multi-sampled over several velocity-controlled resonances. (S770 owners, of course, have serious filters on board. Incidentally, I found out last week that the envelopes on an S1100 can be tuned while in multi-timbral play. Are you listening, Roland?) Some sustained multi-sampled synths, old beatboxes, a rather invigorating miscellaneous section with a viable house piano, some 'Ideas & Effects', and we're almost home and dry. There is a well documented S1000/S1100 data section at the end, containing just under 16MB of drums and strings. Lucky you. (Grrr!) There's also a line up tone on disc, to assist efficient sample level setting.

Overall, similar in variety to AMG's Coldcut and Pascal CDs, though with more fidelity and less attitude, this is a good general purpose library for most pop work.

£49 inc VAT.

AMG, (Contact Details).

ZERO-G
MC TWO: AMBIENT •••½

Now on to the competition where we find a very different animal. Clad in green and blue (therefore matching just about every object in my bedroom, including the mouse mats), with a probably very famous waterfall cascading down the cover, the title of the new Zero-G CD says it all: 'Ambient' (Time & Space, £49.95).

Hot on the heels of Orb's acclaimed UFO CD, this is bound to appeal. Textures abound, some windy, some watery, some just plain whacky. Trouble is: these tend to be memory intensive: modern synthesizers are capable of generating complex evolving soundscapes from a snippet of ROM: recording the same into a sampler can take up 100,000 times as much RAM! However, if you can only afford one expensive box then a sampler has to be first choice. Still, there are ways to extend the shelf life of some of these greedy samples: where filters sweep in and out try alternate direction looping. You may also lower sampling frequencies: many textures have lowish cut-offs.

Right now I'm admiring the ultrasonic sequences on track 20. Finger cymbals and New Age percussion follow. The first 19 tracks contain an army of whooshy, metallic, analogue and other textures, not unexpectedly. Track 25 has some lively hoots and whistles. 26 sports a thumb piano, multi-sampled, 27 onwards feature ethnic percussion — by this point I'm beginning to expect whales. Nicely understated bell trees and gongs are followed by a variety of shakers (by now we are on track 33). This is good stuff.

On track 35 there are some real tooth clenchers. 36 has some shy prepared percussion sounds, and 37 takes us outside the air lock. By 38 we hit the nature trail, but a few samples later come chords and notes (and was that a whale?). The synth percussion of track 44 sounds tidy, less so the textures that precede it. 45 has some classic synth FX, though. 46 has three nice unpretentious waves, and 47 has good, weird, atmospheres. The ambient FX are just asking for more ambience and FX to be applied to them. The following tracks have some excellent noises, though the description of them might seem a bit repetitive, as they're more synth atmospheres. 52 to 54 take us back into the real world, with flutes, gamelans etc. There must be a didgeridoo in here somewhere... 55 is synth city again. I like the 'Rapid bell loop' of track 56. And so it goes on. Hard to keep the descriptive text flowing, easy to listen to.

The crafty Ian Boddy, creator of this CD, has eschewed the whales, and included dolphins instead. Nice one. Checking forwards, I see the Aborigines have also been omitted. Very un-cheesy. Small mammals, insects, water and wind are well represented, as are birds and bells. Many more synth FX and textures — more of the same, but different — take us all the way to the end of this CD. Considering the length of many of the samples here I was surprised to find well in excess of 500 (750 at a guess?) on board.

Many of you will buy this CD for the title alone. At first you might be a little disappointed. The sounds here are non-mega. Rather they are designed to layer well in a composition, and take effects well. A grower, and hitting the mark fairly squarely.

Zero G MC 2: Ambient £49.95 inc VAT.

Time & Space, (Contact Details).

MUSIC SUITE
SOUND COLLECTION VOL. 1 — ETHNIC PERCUSSION •••½

Presented in the manner of a CD single (narrow case, budget sleeve) comes The Music Suite Sound Collection Volume 1 — Ethnic Percussion (£39.99). The samples-are well catalogued, and all lengths are given.

Five seconds of silence lurk between each sample: more than is required for the CD pause routine, but (despite what the sleeve claims) not quite enough for continuous sampling and naming, which is always essential when inputting to a large library. After all samples have been presented on CD, there is a section at the end which contains the contents of tracks 1 to 20 streamed continuously — not in S1100 data format, merely audio. This is for samplers with "digital inputs... transfer these samples across and separate them when they are all aboard", we are advised. A great idea, boys.

There is nothing on this CD other than loads of percussion single hits, plus a few 'patterns', which are not loops, but flams, accents etc. So why buy it? First off, not everyone has access to the full EIII library, and the instruments here are unlike those found on your average 16-bit drum machine. Secondly, the voices are recorded well, with a very usable acoustic, in delightfully understated stereo. Mono sampling should not detract too much here, though if you can afford it stereo sampling has to be preferred. Dynamics are good: my MM1 mixer had difficulty coping at times! I did hear the odd bit of genuine distortion, however (I cite 31:2 as an obvious example). Also, there is perceptible hiss on some of the bell tails. Nothing that a well chosen filter envelope couldn't cure, however.

As a rule each instrument has a selection of voices, moving iteratively between hard and soft, long and short, high and low, or any combination of these. (There are 34 tabla samples, for example). Each is played with what sounds to me like fairly authentic technique by one Dave Starkie.

Among the total complement of sounds are: 'Flat', 'Gazelle', 'Thunder', Singhalese, Barrel, 'Mini' and talking drums; djembe; tablas; log; hollow drum; pipe; congas and bongos (various); batterphone; woodblocks; coconuts; bones & spoons; guiro; rattles (good selection here); shakers; every bell you'll ever need (except the church variety); barrels; bowls; anvils; gongs; 'Whistler'; cuica; berimbau; and, guess what, didgeridoo. I knew it would creep in before I shut up this month's Sample Shop.

This CD sets out to cover a certain base, and it does the job very well. Should find a market with the ambient crowd, too, being efnik 'n' all. (Tip: If you're looking for something a little different, try sampling the swept sine tone given as a level reference at the end.)

£39.99 inc VAT.

The Music Suite, (Contact Details).

NINJA TUNE
JAZZ BREAKS VOL. 3: DJ FOOD ••••/•••

A late entry this month — it dropped through my letterbox this morning — is 'Jazz Breaks Vol. 3: DJ Food' (Ninja Tune). This is a DJ-ready collection of sampleable musical pieces — more like a breakbeat compilation than a conventional sample CD. You should find it in specialist record shops (should be £10.99), or it's available by mail order from Ninja Tunes (a snip at £9.10!). The tracks comprise programmed drums, drum loops, sax and bass riffs, and the odd keyboard or vocal snippet. The style, and sound tends towards rare groove, but with sharper edges, and a hint of Hed.

Produced by Coldcut in a jazzy vein, and with tempos ranging from 86 to 138, this would be good to play early on at your party, before the hardcore, the disco and the ambient. Bright, breezy, and upfront, the collection does, however, leave little to the imagination. Samplists should be making tunes like these up from their own bits and pieces, not buying them wholesale. Better leave this one to the DJs, for whom it is intended. And, of course, dedicated Coldcut fans.

For serious loop collectors, however, there are a few items worth checking out. Also, after the 20 breakbeat tracks come the 'Sexy Bits', music fragments, drum voices and fills and the like. An interesting but limited offering. Some have been heard before on the excellent 'Kleptomania'. To explain the split star rating for this CD: four stars for jazzy DJs, three stars for jazzy samplists.

(PS: I forgot to tell you about my holiday: watch out for the UK remix of 'Sov Yapma' by Yasar Kekeva, and try to visit Dalyan sometime. And isn't Andrew Rawnsley fab? Allahaismarladik, y'all.)

£9.10 inc VAT.

Ninja Tunes, (Contact Details).