Nu Metal City | Future Music Magazine

Sometimes you've got to wonder how Big Fish Audio manages to turn out such a stupendous amount of material, on such a consistent basis, with such a high standard of quality. Sure, they've got a fleet of sound designers and producers on tap to pump out bangin' beats and cool construction kits, but even those who've been plied with loop libraries for the last decade have to be astonished that they keep it flowing.

Two of their latest DVD collections, Rush: Progressive House & Trance and Nu Metal City, illustrate their range as well as their prolific talents. Rush metes out 1.3GB of the kind of brainy dancefloor beats, synth sequences and basslines that aspirants to the throne of Sasha, Digweed and Deep Dish will find absolutely essential-big blurping synths, some remarkable stuttering bass figures and floor-munching kick, percussion and no-kick loops, plus loads of FX and more.

Smart formatting means you get four key folders: Construction Kits, Drums, Pitched Instruments and Sound Effects (Sfx). This makes sense. If it's loops you need, you'll find them coherently managed in both full mix breakouts and instrumental folders; if you want one-shots, you get the same duel management options-the five folders of singleshot drumkits, for example, were almost worth the sticker price alone. Conveniently, both NMC and Rush include all their goods in WAV, REX, and Apple Loop formats.

But unlike Rush, Nu Metal City is arranged strictly into construction kits-a full thirty of the damn things!-and it couldn't be further away stylistically, a gravel-eating grabbag of live industrial and nu-metal instrumental performances, edited into collage-ready chunks. It's hard enough to find big beefy Bonham-on-valium grooves like these, but NMC also weighs in heavily with driving, drop-tuned guitars, gnarly synth textures, burly bass and a surprising amount of well-executed scratch maneuvers. An up-to-date take on the classic Methods of Mayhem approach, NMC threatens to turn your humble loop players into a dreadlocked, dress-wearin' goth overnight.-David Roman