This collection is unashamedly electronic in nature as you'd expect from the classic beat boxes it is based on, if your looking for anything remotely "live drum" like then this isn't going to be one for you.

Immediately on diving into the collection your instantly hit with the "Euro/German electronic dance" style and feel of the loops. Whilst the loops have quite some variety from very spartan Kraftwerk style electronic blips and burbles to very rapid click and rolls there is that distinctive Teutonic signature feel to the whole collection. If that's a style you like then your going to get a lot out of the CD.

The BPM's of the loops in the collection range from 80 (well 80.64, they are exact !) to a manic 210, though in many cases you'd be hard pressed to pin the BPM of a loop down to accurately by ear, some of the slower loops sound quicker and the BPM's that are listed at over 200 BPM certainly don't sound quite that rapid. The loops are biased towards the quicker speeds, perhaps only 10% of the collection is under 120 BPM.

Loops collections tend to fall into one of two categories, either lots of loops, or not so many loops and providing variations. Hamburg Loopz 2 is of the latter variety, in most cases providing a base loop and then a whole range of variations after it, in one or two cases into double figures. But the average is 3 or 4. This approach is a double edged sword, on the one hand you get a lot fewer unique loops, but on the other those that are there are then easier to craft into a finished track. It's one thing to have a loop, quite another to produce a finished track from it.

Perhaps here though there are maybe too many variations in some cases, and in others the changes are quite subtle, just a variation on a single element or the addition or subtraction of an element is very common. I counted 180 of the descriptions as starting with "Variation", out of 300 or so loops that's a big chunk, and that's not counting variations like "Nurde 2 + toms", certainly the number of unique sounding loops is well under a 100. It's a difficult equation to balance of course, if your not hooked on a loop then it doesn't matter how many variations there are your not going to use it, if your are hooked then you can't have enough.

There has been a fair amount of effects applied in some places, especially heavy use of distortion here and there. To the extend your just left with a "grrrr" sort of interference effect, I'm not really sure how that would work in a track at all. The advantage here though is that this is usually just a variation, so if you don't like the loop there will still be elements that you can use. Bearing in mind that the source material here is quite limited the producers have managed to create quite a range of sonic diversity throughout the collection.

Programming varies from quite simple thump, tick straight 4/4 loops to very intricate, complex loops, with a whole number of separate elements, especially trademark little blips, snaps and clicks. Generally there is little in the way of fill effects, the odd spot bass element or faint synth like effect is about as far as we get away from the main percussive elements.

There is both what you might call mainstream dance loops and also some more experimental material, off beat hits, 6/4 timing and so forth. Some of the more off beat stuff does sound rather odd if your used to a straight 4/4 diet, on the other hand it may well encourage people to try something a little more eclectic, but do feel generally would be a bit inaccessible for most people.

The loops overall sound quite light and open, you may need to be careful not to lose some of the detail within a mix when adding other elements as these aren't the sorts of loops that will cut through a mix. But otherwise despite the complexity in cases they wouldn't necessarily dominate a mix and would blend in well with other elements.

Overall quite a mixed bag. There are some really great loops in here, I loved the sounds of loops like 80's hip hop, nurde 1,ndw, 808 pop beat & 808 d&b loop. Some others I thought just a little too effected or experimental.

Note: The CD-ROM .wav version of the files is in the traditional loop plus a beat format - makes them a little more difficult to use with automatic looping programs like ACID for example.

Summary & Overall...