Rekkerd Releases Free Roland TR-909 Sample Pack By Plughugger

Rekkerd has announced the release of Trashy Techno Drums, a free lo-fi Roland TR-909 sample pack crafted by Plughugger.

There are dozens of free 909 sample packs out there, not to mention the paid ones, so one might wonder what’s the purpose of releasing another one. The thing is, Trashy Techno Drums is unlike all other 909 packs out there. These 909 drum hits were resampled from the legendary Atari 1040 ST home computer via the Microdeal Replay 4 sampling cartridge. And although one could always pass clean drum hits through a bitcrusher plugin to achieve a somewhat similar effects, what we can hear in these drum samples is the real, organic 8-bit sound of an old computer system.

The pack contains 202 audio samples in total, 87 of which were sampled directly from the Atari ST and 115 which were processed with additional effects. All samples are provided in 16-bit WAV format. The dry sounds are sorted into ten categories: kicks, snares, claps, hi-hats, rides, crash, low/mid/high toms, and rimshots. All samples are clearly labeled, making the library easy to browse. The most important thing, though, is the quality and usability of the included sounds and these are top notch in both regards.

I was happy to find that the pack doesn’t contain a bunch of plain old bitcrushed drums that you could make by passing clean 909 samples through any bitcrusher plugin out there and calling it a day. Nope, these drum hits have that special character and grit that you won’t won’t find in most lo-fi sample libraries available online. Some of the kicks could also work as fat gritty bass sounds, the snares could be used for layering on top of clean snare hits to make them sound heavier, and most other samples are also well-made and quite inspiring.

Being a sucker for drum machines and old computers, downloading this pack was a no-brainer for me. To make the deal even better, much like all other free content on Rekkerd, the pack is available for direct free download, no strings attached. If you like using lo-fi drum sounds in your music, this freebie from Rekkerd and Plughugger is well worth checking out.

Trashy Techno Drums is available for free download via Rekkerd (31.1 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 202 audio samples in 16-bit WAV format).