The collection is broken down into three sections - Loops, Hits and Toolscapes.

Loops - Tracks 2-42 - The bulk of the CD are given way to the loops, these range in BPM from 80-160, fairly evenly spread in steps of 10 between these two extremes. As most of the sounds are toneless they could easily be processed around with to get any BPM that you needed.

My first impression when listening to this was "how on earth did they find so many variations" of these sounds. If you can imagine every piece of machinery you've ever heard, then stick a zero on the end and this is how many these guys have heard !. There is just a huge array of industrial type loops here. Every kind of hammer, drill, saw, lathe, machine, scratch, whirr, clunk and thunk has been sampled and then looped.

The loops generally just contain one or two elements so that they don't sound too intricate or dense and the actual "rhythm" of the loops is usually straightforward. You really get a wide range of sounds from big dense saw sound type loops to more tick ticky machine loops and everything in-between.

How you might use the loops depends on the user, although the packaging quotes assorted styles of music, really they're atonal and style less in the main. Many would make ideal "top loops" to layer over the top of a regular break to add some sonic variety from the regular percussive elements. Alternatively a simple beat could be added underneath some loops to create an industrial type loop. Some of the loops could even be used in isolation, or layered together to produce more complex machine like rhythms.

Sonically the loops vary from sounding very light, to rather screeching headache inducing saw and drill type sounds, there has been some processing of the sounds, but little extreme, aside from a ton of reverb in places.

One impression I had of some of the loops were of Depeche Mode circa 1985-90 period, replacing traditional elements with machine sounds. The demo track in particular reminded me of that. On the other hand there are certainly a number of sounds that you'd wonder how they could be used in a musical context, but that's not to say that film/game/multimedia creators wouldn't find a use for them. Just don't listen to the CD with a hangover !

The overall impression I got from the collection was of a very wide ranging collection of industrial type sounds - looped, with some effecting in places. What perhaps is lacking is a bit of bite, edge and power. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, if your looking to make a loop more interesting by taking a loop from here. But if your looking to make a cutting, biting loop from here then you might struggle a little.

Hits - Tracks 43-62 - Essentially this is all of the individual sounds that have been extracted from all of the loops, broken down in to low, midrange, high and machine hits. Really exactly the same comments apply as above, except of course here its easy to take just a single element from a loop (mind you there is no way of knowing where the hits are for any given loop...) and then use that in your own loop or construct other loops from assorted elements.

It would certainly have been easier as is a common sample CD practice to have the individual hits played after the relevant loop, rather than lost in the general Hits mix of individual sounds. It's doubly difficult as the entire section is presented in the "Dual Mono" format, if your looking for something specific then it may take some time....

Otherwise it's a good solid collection of sounds, as mentioned above, if you can think of an "industrial" type sound your going to find it here.

Toolscapes - Tracks 63-74 - In a way these are like the loops but not looped, more sustained, slightly longer sounds that carry on the machinery/industrial theme, even more drills, saws, machinery, rattling and clangings. Again most of the sounds just contain one or two elements, and without the looping do sound rather more mundane, drills just kind of sounding like drills sort of thing. Must confess to being a little disappointed here, more like a sound effects section. Whilst to be fair it would be difficult to source many of the samples for yourself here I'd struggle to find much use for many of these - unless I was looking for sound effects for some purpose or another.

Summary & Overall...