Blister Pak | Sound on Sound Magazine

Drum hits; you just can't have enough of them can you? Being first and foremost a rhythm-obsessed programmer with an already bulging hard drive full of drum sounds, it came as little surprise to me when this new sample CD from Big Fish arrived at my door to review. The first audio CD contains all of the single drum hits, while the second mixed-media CD holds the remaining audio and the complete collection in WAV format.

After kicking off (if you'll pardon the pun) with the ubiquitous, and rather disappointing, demo track, we plunge straight into a large bank of drum samples. How large? Well here's the breakdown (sorry): 640 kicks; 400 hi-hats, cymbals, and tambourines; 532 snares and claps; and 366 percussion effects. Firmly geared towards electronic music (all the samples included on the CD are synthetic) the quality of these single hits is excellent. The kicks range from scratchy blips to huge subby monsters, whilst the snares cover just about every noise you could want, from hard techno blips to harsh snaps and ambient ripples. The hats and cymbals are equally good, and the percussion covers both traditional sounds and more extreme synth squeals and burps.

In addition to the single drum hits, Big Fish have included a bank of 175 percussive phrases, which range from downright odd sounds to weird mini-riffs, and 114 tonal hits. Both of these sections are excellent for finding those small, odd noises to add flavour to a breakdown or even inspire a whole new idea from scratch. The tonal hits in particular are very good, ranging from spooky bell-like pulses to rough parps and crashes.

Rounding things off in some style are the 68 collections. These are small groups of hits bundled together providing themed miniature drum kits. The names of these kits give a good indication of the weird and wonderful sounds on offer, from 'horridness' to 'trash can lids' or 'bowl mic' - nice.

If I had to be really, really picky (who me?), I'd have to say it would have been nice to have had an example drum loop for each of the collection kits - however the samples are grouped, it's always going to be a slightly laborious task trawling through masses of single hits. But none of this can distract from the quality (or quantity) of content included here.

If you're looking for 'real' sampled drum sounds then this CD set is not for you, although there are plenty of realistic-sounding hits included. But if you produce any genre of dance/electronic music or are looking for something a little different to liven up your beats, then look no further, as Blister Pak is stuffed to the rafters with top-quality sounds that will be an asset to any drum programmer's palette. Looks like I'll have to get a bigger hard drive. Oli Bell