Heat Seekers | Remix Magazine

There was a time when you'd never see "high-quality polish" and "hip-hop library" in the same sentence. Heat Seekers, however, shimmers like a hundred points of ice across a platinum grille. The 4.2 GB DVD (1.85 GB of 24-bit WAV) is arranged into 50 key-referenced construction kits from 70 to 140 bpm. With 721 WAV loops and hits in all, the collection is upbeat and exuberant, as will as a little techno-quirky. There are influcens from rave culture, space rock, tribal ceremony, contemporary, ethnic and cut-up orchestral music. Though the traditionally winning combos of orchestra hits, synths stabs, pizzicatos, clavs, plucked guitar and dramatic strings abound here, Heat Seekers is decidely more electro-infused hip-hop, with wild synth effects and virtual sounds folded into rawer elements borrowed from rock and funk.

The creative instrumentation includes pitched log drumming with a voodoo synth lead, huge dive-bombing bass with a guitarlike synth lead against a speed-pitched and reversed 70 bpm rock-drum groove, space-harp glissandos put to a laid-back Prince-type funk groove and soo on; though I would add that Heat Seekers leans more heavily to the Southern and exotic-sounding palette than anything else. All kits contain a full mix and elements broken out into individual loops, as well as a folder of hits and another of individual drum tracks. All in all, this disc should set fire to more than one hit track this year.