Review: Loopmasters Coldcut Sound Science

I got hooked on music from the Ninja Tune record label back in the mid nineties. DJ Food, Funki Porcini, Amon Tobin, Vadim… Just a few of the artists that got me excited about music in ways I hadn’t experienced before.

Ninja Tune was founded by Jonathan More and Matt Black, the guys behind the most excellent Solid Steel radio show. As electronic music duo Coldcut they have hundreds of releases and remixes on their name.

If you’ve never heard of Coldcut you can read up on Jon and Matt on their wiki page.

With Sound Science, Coldcut offers a collection of quality sounds similar to the ones found in their own recordings.

This exclusive sample pack produced for Loopmasters by Matt and Jon themselves features a huge collection of previously unheard and unreleased material which is sure to grace many future hit records through genres such as Hip Hop, Breaks, House and Drum and Bass. A true skeleton key of sound, the loops and samples are a must for every serious music producers collection.

I’m not sure how to best describe the Coldcut sound, but I know it has to do with head bobbing. Funky breakbeats, jazzy bass, high energy synth stabs, groovy melodic samples… mix it all up in a blender and you know it will sound delicious.

What do you get?

Sound Science includes over 350 loops in both Wav and Rex formats, almost 300 single shot sounds, and 45 patches in various popular sampler formats.

The loops are categorized in the following folders, with 4 tempo subfolders each (70, 88, 100, and 133 bpm):

• Bass (37), includes nasty synth basslines, regular bass guitar, some lovely double bass grooves and even the odd clarinet loop.
• Drums (166), from jazzy acoustic drum kits to glitchy electronic drums. There are some real gems here, so authentic and funky. Get your chopping tools ready, you’re going to want to cut these up!
• Musical loops (111), including complete musical themes, simple synth melodies, super sweet chords, funky orchestral stabs, electric, acoustic & nylon guitars (love the foot tapping in the background), various pads, Moog sounds, Theremin… I could go on for a while but I think you get the idea; this stuff is diverse!
• The last loops folder features a bunch of vocals and sound effects (41). These include blips & bleeps, wobbles, jazzy vox, dubby delay sounds, scratches, and more. Quite some unique and useful sounds.

The larger part of the single shots comprises of drum sounds, also conveniently divided in subfolders for kick, snare, toms, etc. With just 8 bass samples and 11 instrument samples the bass and instrument folders look a little bare. Where applicable the sounds (and loops) have the root key included in the file names.

With the exception of the drum kits and hits the included sampler patches are basically single shot sounds mapped across a few octaves. Nothing to get too excited about.

The variety of sounds in this library is just what you would expect from Coldcut; a mix of real instruments and synths, acoustic drum loops and electronic breakbeats, sugar sweet melodies and noisy sound fx, and lots in between.

Check the audio demo from Loopmasters for an idea of what Sound Science has to offer.

So what do I think?

One of Sound Science’s samples says “let’s just use a sample”, and that is exactly what this sample library is all about. It has that old school sampling vibe, authentic yet fresh.

Due to the wide variety of sounds and styles Sound Science might appear to be a bunch of random samples. However, once you start tossing them together you will find that many actually work together very well.

I only wish they would have put a larger amount of samples in the collection. 350 loops may seem like a lot but many of them are variations on the same beat/melody.

Still, Sound Science is a great sample library delivering the Coldcut vibe I was hoping for; you’ll be bobbing your head in no time!
Now let’s just hope there will be a Sound Science 2.

More information: Loopmasters / Coldcut Sound Science

Hey there, I'm Ronnie and I run Rekkerd.org. I'm a bedroom music producer and guitar player, and I love chicken vindaloo & all things glitch.