EastWest Breaks from the Nu Skool Multi-Format

Been maing music hobby-wise since 1991, semi-pro since 1997. Generally in the area of synthpop/ebm/techno/[insert electronic dance genre here]. Using this sample library with NI Kontakt and Battery.

Primarily on powered monitors from a MOTU 828.

Quite a decent selection of breaks.

On the plus side: timing is locked on these - you're never going to have to worry about any slop when lining these up with other sequenced sounds. The breaks themselves are interesting and different from the standard collection. And of course there's lots and lots and lots of them. Two sections - one called "dirt breaks" which is electronic sounding processed drums, and one called "live breaks" which supposedly sounds more like live drumming (but is still heavily processed). The dirt breaks range from the standard variations-on-the-funky-drummer to more wild glitchy noise-fests. There's a lot to work with here.

On the minus side: Some of the breaks are too effected and immediately sound recognizeable as a BT program. LUckily, this is escapable, since most of the weird sample effects are done on the 4th bar of the loop, so slicing them off before you get there is alright. Many of the loops are extrememly "busy" and layering with lots of other stuff could get messy if you're not preapred for it. A few of the "house" loops are kind of boring.

The sound quality of these is pristine, unless of course the break itself was required to have dirt in it. Sometimes they seem a bit overcompressed but that's usually for effect as well. The BT-ness of the samples is often a bit overwhelming (how often do we need to hear him granularize and timestretch/pitchshift the 4th bar?) but it's excellent raw material if you're dicing and resequencing beats, or need a funky electronic loop quick.