Dark Side of the Tune is a sample company that prides itself on offering sounds that are different.
The about page on its website says:
“Artistically, we focus on the darker sounds of the underground against the bright and shiny music of pop culture,” says Shawn Shirey, founder and chief sound designer for the company. “Our question authority attitude helps us create modern vibes with a darker tone.”
After releasing Tritone — a collection of three vibe-driven, loop-based sample and sound libraries — earlier this year, Dark Side of the Tune now takes on the MPC market with Dirty Little Sequencer, a collection of three MPC kits.
Dark Side of the Tune MPC kits come in 500 or 1000/2500/5000 format. Each complete kit fills all of the pads on your MPC, offering a simplified and straightforward program at an affordable price. In this collection, we leave out parameter settings, Q links and any pre-arrangement so you can create your own custom kits. Non-MPC users can also use these sounds to build custom drum kits in their favorite sampler.
Dirty Little Sequencer MPC Kits
- Drum Abrasion offers acoustic drums and various found instruments roughly treated with warm tube saturation, tube mic’s and compression, creating a bigger and beefier organic palette.
- Bent-O-Box contains sounds from circuit bent toys run through analog distortion and modulation. Unearthly guttural noises and screeching digital mayhem meet MPC efficiency.
- Lost Percussion offers new and vintage analog synthesized drums using circuit bending techniques and analog processing to give them a modern edge. All TR sounds (808, 909) are purposely avoided.
The Dark Side of the Tune MPC kits are available for download in MPC 500 format (48 samples) for $7.99 USD or MPC 1000/2500/5000 format (64 samples) for $8.99 USD.
So what do I think?
The Dirty Little Sequencer MPC Kits offer a nice selection of samples for a reasonable price. The sounds are generally quite rough and noisy, yet very usable.
Although most of the sounds in these packs aren’t necessarily essential, they are unique and full of character. Drum Abrasion and Lost Percussion include a good amount of various drum and percussion sounds. Kicks, snares, hihats, claps, percussion hits, etc… it’s all there.
The Bent-O-Box samples sound a lot like any other circuit bent speak & spell/math type sounds. They are noisy and weird, just like you would expect from this type of stuff. Good quality, don’t get me wrong, but not really my thing.
My favorite pack is Lost Percussion. This one has some lovely drum hits from machines like the Casiotone MT-45, Hing Hon EK-001 and the Yamaha PortaSound PS-200.
Now I do really like unique and unconventional sounds, but these MPC kits clearly aren’t for everyone. Make sure to check Dirty Little Sampler, a collection of exclusive out-takes from the Bent-O-Box, Drum Abrasion and Lost Percussion kits. If you like those, I am sure you will enjoy the full products as well.
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.
