Review: Loopmasters The Funky Underground, sample pack by Darren Payton

Loopmasters The Funky Underground is a sample library featuring loops and samples by producer Darren Payton.

Guaranteeing full fat freshness every time, the Funky Underground is a solid collection of some of the best sounds from the Underground, presenting here a collection of Funky Filtered Beats, Chronic Chords, Big and Bouncy Bass lines, and Superb Stabs – all EQ’d and processed ready for the biggest club systems, and ready to inspire your next club track.

The Funky Underground includes almost 500 loops, generally 8 or 16 beats in length at either 126 or 128 bpm, and a few at 124 bpm. The loops are categorized into basslines, drums, filtered loops, combi grooves, music loops, and vocals.

Right off the bat the bass loops are perfect for the intended style. Lots of deep soulful sounds, funky thumpy basslines, the muffled next-door-neighbor sound… it’s all there. For ease of use the keys and progressions are in the filenames, as with all melodic content in this library.

Drums come as 72 full force four-on-the-floor style beats as well as 142 loops with singled out instruments – kick+snare, percussion, shaker, and top loops. Most beats have that “in your face” vibe, tight and funky. The variations are useful for building up your tracks.

The filtered loops – 53 samples strong, are mostly melodic elements like bass, chords, etc. that have some kind of gate type filter action going on. Great for layering with beats or to use in breaks. The collection of music loops mostly features electric piano sounds, a good amount of synth loops, and a few others like organ, piano, and guitar. A total of 77 samples in this section.

A nice variety of vocal loops is also included. These 20 samples mainly feature cut up vocal recordings, processed and sequenced to create rhythmic loops. Quite some nice creative work done here. Finally, a selection of 21 combi grooves offers a combination of the sound categories just mentioned, minus the drums. Makes for some nicely processed melodic loops.

Besides loops you also get over 700 one-shot sounds, including Rhodes chords, various sound fx, melodic & vocal stabs, and more than 600 drum samples.

The sound library also includes sampler patches for these single shots. As per usual, the patches simply map each sound across the keyboard, and in the case of drum hits each patch has a collection of the same type of samples (e.g. kicks, snares, etc.) mapped for auditioning or quick swapping of sounds. A number of drum sounds have also been mapped into 10 drum kits. While I generally don’t use these patches I will make an exception for the drum kits.

So what do I t think?

Funky, soulful, fresh… this sample library hits the spot alright. The Funky Underground is a collection of high quality loops and sounds for house music.

The loops are well produced, with tons of catchy melodies and beats that pack a punch. The additional one-shot sounds are a good match, featuring useful sounds for adding flavor to the loops or you could even create completely new beats and melodies with these samples.

Darren Payton shows that he is a skillful producer by delivering loops and sounds that are not only processed perfectly (EQ’d, filtered, etc) but also have that musical quality that instantly inspires.

If you are into house music you will want to check out The Funky Underground. You can’t go wrong with this one, I promise.

More information: Loopmasters / The Funky Underground

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.