SloFunk | Future Music

Mmmm, this one's for all the lovely laydeez out there. Excuse me for the Barry White-style introduction, but Slo Funk is a collection of funk grooves that wouldn't sound out of place in the Love Walrus' satin-decked love palace.

The two-disc set (one containing audio, the other WAV and MIDI files) offers 18 construction kits in various keys and tempos. Each kit is broken down into its component parts on each track, so you get solo horn, guitar, bass and keyboard licks, plus drums played together and as individual hits. At the end of most construction kits there are synth notes too. Each of the 18 tracks on the audio CD is also available as MIDI files on the second disc, so , if you like how they sound but want them at a vastly different tempo, you can load them up in your sequencer and change the tempo to suit yourself.

The samples have been recorded well and Slo Funk is a slick-sounding collection. The horns are especially cleanly recorded and sound fantastic. Having all the drums played separately as kits and individual hits is handy, and they're not all the same generic funk sounds either; you also get beats played on drum machines thrown into the bargain.

However, Slo Funk is a niche affair and I can't imagine anyone other than R'n'B enthusiasts or fans of schmaltzy two-step using these samples.

A good collection of sexy funk samples, but this will only appeal to a tiny minority of music-makers.