Review: Big Fish Audio Urban Nation

Big Fish Audio has just released Urban Nation, a construction kit style sample library for urban music.

Urban Nation takes urban construction kits to the next level. Each of the 25 kits contains three distinct sections to expand the possibilities of your music creation. In most cases each of the three sections has a key change from the prior section to give your music even more depth and creativity.

Whether you want to add a bridge, a pre-chorus, or create something totally unique and original, Urban Nation is where it’s at!

The 25 construction kits are good for a total of 1,532 loops and one-shot hits. These samples are available in three formats: Apple Loops, Acid Wav, and REX (incl. RMX installer).

Each one of the construction kits is available from a separate folder on the DVD. These folders already indicate tempo information and the key(s) used.

Inside each construction kit are the three folders of distinct content — separate loops for bass, synth, drums, etc., also with tempo and key info. The Wav and Apple Loops formats have a complete demo loop of all musical sections as (I assume) originally produced by NuVintage Music’s Joel Joseph and Kenny Moran.

For greater flexibility you also get multi-track samples of the beats so you can combine elements. The individual hits from the beats across all three sections are also presented as one-shot samples so you can easily create variations.

So what do I think?

Construction kit libraries obviously have some limitations. Although some of the loops can easily be cut up and redone (especially beats and bass) the melodic loops will be a lot harder to turn into something completely new. Urban Nation is not for you if you are looking to create music from scratch.

That said, construction kits don’t get much better than this. Urban Nation provides you with everything you need to mix and mash loops and samples into some high quality urban music. Each of the 25 construction kits perfectly captures the sound of current urban music. While you would expect the loops within each kit to work together very well, many actually also sound great with samples from other kits. Having multi-track and single shot samples of the beats is a big plus.

The only problem I have with Urban Nation is that some of the demo tracks are so good I just want to loop them for hours… Yes construction kit #16 I’m looking at you!

Anyway, great production and high quality sounds with a sufficient amount of possibilities to make it your own.

More information: Big Fish Audio / Urban Nation

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.