Hit Zone | Future Music Magazine

Samples: 34 patterns with breakdowns plus 96 purely rhythmic loops. Good to see and hear a sample CD with its intentions shown so clearly. This CD is aimed at anyone who wants to have a hit in our current pop/R&B/hip hop dominated charts. It therefore has a bunch of breaks and breakdowns between 70 and 120bpm (although mostly at the slower end of things) all of which concentrate on what it says on the tin: soulful R&B grooves a la Timbaland/Neptunes all with a street-ish edge. Criticisms are few. The vocalised voice that introduces the tempo of each pattern was cool at first but gets annoying. Also, some of the loops just happen too many times- you really only need to hear a loop once; your sampler/sequencer can do the rest for you. And some of the tunes use some great melodies that fit well with the genres but you'd feel guilty about using any of them direct. You might want to use these melodic pieces as style as frameworks more than direct lifts but otherwise it's a well produced snapshot of what's out there at the moment.