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Technopolis Page 2/3
As soon as the CD starts your instantly transported to techno land. Very rapid beats, squelchy bass, soft kicks, arpeggios, blips and vocoded vocals. The BPM's range from 116-225, though the majority are in the 150-175 range. "Slow groove" is at 120 BPM to give you an idea of the high tempo's presented throughout the collection.
Loops - About half the collection is given over to loops, about 250 of them, there is quite a range - the sub sections that are listed are Drum loops, Discobeat Rhythmbeat, Vocoded, Percussion, Cymbal, Wood & Metal, Electronic, TK, Sequence, Stylistic, Fun, Piano, Space & Trance & Filtered Single Note.
Although there is a fair range, there isn't too much variance from the central techno dance style. The loops invariably have very light sounding electronic components, with very little in the way of power or bite to them, despite their speed, almost quite mild and mellow at times, the rapidly repeating elements becoming more tones than rhythms.
Loops are presented in a variety of lengths, mostly two or four bars, though some are shorter and there are a few quite long samples that do feature some evolution to them. Otherwise there is little in the way of variation to the samples presented, several that have two or three but the majority just have the one variant. Does make the task of turning them into a workable track tricky.
There are a whole variety of fill effects beyond the regular percussive elements, lots of bass lines, blips and synth elements, several of the loops in particular towards the end do sound pretty complete, and did leave me thinking what could be added past a vocal element. The loops in the main a fairly simple in structure, some of the more experimental ones have some effecting of the sounds to add some interest, but in the main the best phrase I can think of is "so-so". Not that they're bad, just a touch uninspiring and sound a little dated.
Arpeggios, Bass & Guitars - We start of with some long filter effects, not quite sure what one would do with these except chop a part out of them. There a few nice arpeggios, but rather too few, fourteen in total. There are double that number of bass lines, again some good ones in there, ideal for the style of music. There are a few dreaded Roland 303 style ones as you might expect.
Guitars are pretty good, some clever effecting of the sounds produces a nice variety of unusual guitar effects. The section rounds out with a handful of OK single chord and hit effects.
Vocals - Whilst not the absolute worst sample vocal collection I've come across, this is cliché city, vocoded phrases, lo-fi "Computer Speak". Lots of "One", "Two", "Techno", "Hello, this is your computer"...some of the Alien vocals are OK, but otherwise....
Odds - The remainder of the CD is given over to Radio FX (OK for special effects), Vinyl scratches (21 of them !). Fourteen multisampled synth sounds, which are good, if not particularly inspiring, ideal for the rest of the collection. Rounding out with some filter sweeps, reversed vocoder effects and some reverb effects that you might find uses for as spot effects. Again, OK, but lacking depth and any inspiration factor.
