The client called. They want something fun and clubby for their latest hair care product. Okay. But youre a roots-rock kinda person, so what to do? Id recommend grabbing Ueberschalls House Musique  it nails the kind of upbeat house sound thats heard just about everywhere from country to pop to daytime TV ads. But dont worry, House Musique isnt watered down  production-wise its as current as many of the 12" white labels Ive heard lately, so you should be able to come off sounding like the real deal (except maybe to house producers). 

The library is presented construction kit-style, with complete arrangements and solo elements, making it possible to concoct several minutes from each kit without being too repetitive. Better still, all the drum and percussion hits are also provided as sample patches in Emagic EXS24, Steinberg, HALion, and Native Instruments Kontakt formats, so you can play your own grooves or add accents to the existing loops.

Stylistically, House combines disco-influenced bass and skank/scratch electric guitar with modern drums. Think Daft Punk or Mirwais. Many of the bass tracks are live and well played. In some cases the lines have been ReCycled, but they still retain a bit of room sound, which helps give them an organic vibe. 

Theres no shortage of Clav, wide stereo pads, acoustic and electric pianos, and other sound effects. Rhodes parts dont sound real, more like sample playback renditions from a synth. The attacks dont sound natural, but none of the EPs sound bad. In fact, they have a spacious hi-fi quality that blends well with the lo-fid filtery bass lines and drums.

On the whole, the sampled musical hits and loops are cleverly cut and tastefully layered to create club-ready tracks that youd be hard pressed to discern from commercially released material. Bottom line: For a quick injection of credible-sounding house, or if youre building a collection of dance-oriented kits, House Musique delivers the goods.

Disco and French house is what this collection is all about, and once

again we’re talking mainly construction kits, but there are plenty of

single hits and loops included as well.

There are 12 construction kits in all that first feature the whole mix

before breaking down into each part. So for a typical kit you’ll get the

drum parts played out as loops, plus individual hits for those who want

to reconstruct them themselves, the instrumental backing separately as a

whole, before breaking that down into constituent parts, as well as any

bass, keys, wah guitar and the like. Finishing off the collection are a

wealth of extra loops, including over 60 drum loops, around 90 bass,

guitar, flute, clav, organ and e-piano licks and over 220 single drum

and percussion hits.

It’s a pain that the tempo isn’t consistent throughout, choosing to

meander between 125 to 130bpm, so the kits won’t instantly mix and match

(no problem for those using Live, ACID and so on), but as a collection

you can’t really ask for more in that funky, chunky disco style.

9 out of 10