Xtreme House | Sound on Sound Magazine

This two-CD set comprises an audio CD and a WAV CD-ROM of the same material. The first word of the title probably comes from the sheer volume of material provided, rather than the musical content, as the CD's subtitle, Filtered Funk, probably gives a better indication of what these loops are about; dance-friendly, up-beat and definitely funky. The WAV CD contains in excess of 900 loops (over 600MB) split into categories for bass, beats, filtered loops, keys/synths and single hits, and there is certainly plenty of material packed in. Within these six categories, the loops are organised on a tempo basis, predominantly in the 120-135bpm range. There are no construction kits here, just a lot of loops.

The beats category includes 350 one-bar and two-bar stereo drum loops. This is a wide-ranging collection and, while there is nothing too dangerous in terms of the styles provided, there is plenty of choice and some really nice grooves. There are a few small groups of related loops within this category, and these make it easy to piece together a coherent drum track with a little variation. However, a little bit of Recycle-style loop chopping will be required to add some variations or breaks in other cases. The loops seem very well recorded, with plenty of thumping kicks and splashy hi-hats -- no rock kits here! Usefully, if you want to build your own loops or do some sound replacement in existing loops, the single hits category includes a selection of kicks, snares, hats and claps. There are also some stabs and effects, but, although there are some nice hits here, it might have been good to have a few more of these to choose from, rather than the small number of sound effects loops.

The 130 bass loops are again mostly one-bar and two-bar affairs, with a mixture of stereo and mono files. The sounds go from simple electric basses through to processed synth sounds. While there are some exceptions, I found it useful that the majority of the loops were not too busy in terms of playing, and I found this made them easy to combine with other loops in the collection.

It is in the keyboards/synths, filtered loops and guitars sections that the funky feel really comes out. The first of these includes some very useable Rhodes, piano and organ-based loops, although there is also a good selection of more synthetic sounds and a few pad-like loops. Most of the loops are short chordal parts, of between two and four bars in length. Despite the separate Filtered folder, many of these are pre-processed, and there are some nice filter and delay effects included. Many of the chord parts would work well in styles other than straight house -- for example, there a number of loops that would suit a funky, Jamiroquai-ish track.

There are nearly 200 filtered loops, although the degree of filtering is pretty variable. In terms of styles, this latter group is a real mixed bag, with simple loops featuring single instruments, through to almost complete musical beds. The guitar section, in particular, contains some good stuff, with plenty of slick wah-wah and filtered rhythm playing -- if you think Spiller's Groovejet, you will be on the right lines. Indeed, in the main, this is a pretty good reference for the overall nature of the sample set.

In use, it was pretty easy to put together something approaching a complete backing track using just the contents of this library, although, aside from adding your vocals, you would also need to add the necessary melody instruments and the occasional crash-style cymbal, as neither of these feature heavily in the collection. Xtreme House may not contain anything too extreme in terms of style, but there are plenty of well-recorded and very useable loops that, while not in a construction-kit format, can easily be mixed and matched. If you work with house/dance styles and are looking to expand your palette of loops, then Xtreme House represents good value for money.