The Phono Loop has introduced Influential Kit LITE, a free hip hop drum kit containing 50 select drum shots from their commercial Influential Kit ($25) drum sample library.
The free version of the library contains 50 drum samples in total, sorted into six categories: claps, cymbals, hats, kicks, percussion, snares. The library comes with 16-bit and 24-bit WAV versions of each sample. There aren’t any kits or patches inside, so you’ll need to build your own kits and mappings manually in your sampler of choice. This won’t be much of a problem, though, since the library is neatly organized and easy to browse.
In terms of sound quality, Influential Kit LITE is indeed a solid source of free hip hop drums. The included samples work very well together and it’s obvious that this isn’t just a random collection of samples stolen from other libraries, or sounds that were sliced from third party drum loops (as is, unfortunately, the case with so many freebie kits out there). It’s really easy to build your own custom kits using the provided samples, since they really feel like a coherent collection of drum sounds and share a similar, slightly vintage vibe. The fact that these drums tend to gel so nicely together goes to show that the library was built from scratch and that someone really put a decent amount of work into it.
One thing I didn’t like so much, though, is the amount of reverb that is printed on some of the included samples. Having a bit of reverb is always nice, but some of the snares and claps here have just a bit too much of it, at least for me. Still, it’s 100% a matter of personal taste and it’s quite possible that you’ll like this more than I do. And, of course, you can always pull back on the reverb by decreasing the decay time parameter in your sampler.
The full version of Influential Kit is priced at $25 and it comes with 500 drum samples. That’s quite a lot of bank for your buck and certainly worth the purchase if you like the sounds included in the LITE version of the library. All things considered, Influential Kit is a great first release by The Phono Loop and I’m looking forward to seeing what this new sound design label with come up with in the future.
Influential Kit LITE is available for free download via The Phono Loop (28 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 50 drum samples in 16-bit & 24-bit WAV format).
Last Updated on May 29, 2016 by Tomislav Zlatic.
