Dance Refill | EQ Magazine

This is one of those "at this price, you absolutely can't go wrong" CD-ROMs it's a huge resource for Reason fans into dance-oriented material. For starters, there are 30 complete .RNS files that cover electronic, dance, techno, and house styles. Hit play, and you'll get some cool little demo sequences; the terminally lazy could even pass them off as their own to unsuspecting clients who need 30 seconds of dance music to go behind a commercial. For more creative types, there are a ton of REX files that stretch well, collections of NN-XT samples (from riffs to vintage instrument patches), ReDrum kits, a bunch of solid SubTractor and Malstrom patches, drum hits with NN19 sampler maps, and a whole lot of other riffs, one-shots, and even some left-field sounds thrown in to make people like me happy. Is it all A-Level material? Well, no. Some of it's a little dated (you know how fast this world changes), and some of it falls under "stereotyped dance sounds." But dig a little deeper in the 400MB+ of content, and you'll find plenty of gems and hidden treasures. In fact, one of this CD-ROM's charms is the right balance of the expected and unexpected. Bottom line: If you do dance music and want a bunch of off-the-shelf elements that play nicely together, Dance Refill is $50 well spent. -Craig Anderton