When I heard that Eric Persing of Spectrasonics was working on a couple of grooves libraries, I was intrigued. After all, his Distorted Reality CD is probably the definitive work on textural and tonal weirdness. Burning Grooves features the work of ace drummer Abe Laboriel Jr, which was recorded to ADAT, then treated to various degrees of processing by Eric, using amongst other things, a Boss SE70 and GL100, AMS reverb, Lexicon reverb and a Roland VS800 hard disk recorder. Compression was applied using vintage Neve, Innovations and RCA tube compressors and limiters, while equalisation was provided by Langevin and API units.

Disk 1 of the Akai CD-ROM set comprises mainly 4/4 stereo loops with a selection of fills at the end, though some programs come complete with a selection of fills to go with the main loop. The sound varies from a solid, live-room studio kit kind of feel, to heavily compressed or 'grunged' for use in dance work, and the quality of both the playing and recording is first class. The creative application of EQ, delay and reverb creates an almost industrial effects on some of the examples, while other feature cavernous reverb, but somehow without swamping the sound. What's more, there seem to be lots of different drum sounds - they haven't stuck to using the same kit for everything. Most of the loops have been recorded minus the kick drum and the snare so that you can add your own.

The tempi of the all the loops is listed on the sleeve notes ( 56- 218bpm), along with the amount of sample memory required - typically around 3 to 4Mbytes, but with some of the fill selections taking up to 13.9Mbytes. What I like about this collection is that the rhythms are almost without exception, straight 'on-the-money', and very usable. The treatments are interesting, but don't detract from the power or feel of the playing in any way, and even with the most processed examples, it's still obvious you're hearing a real drummer.

Disk 2 in the CD-ROM set has the individual drum sounds broken down and mapped into 25 different kits, with additional 'modules' that allow you to enhance or modify the kits by adding new snare drums, kick drums, toms, hi-hats, cymbals and so on. Two further kits are provided for Akai users, to demonstrate how the modules might be used. Emu users can load up any kits directly, whereas Ensoniq ASR users have versions especially for them.

Most of these kits are simply excellent, and tip a nod in the direction of general MIDI note mapping as regards the kick, snare, hi-hat and cymbal assignments. However, the toms are each programmed over a pair of keys so that you can play two-finger rolls and fills - a practical touch. Because the samples are allowed to run their natural course rather than being truncated to save memory, they sound extremely natural (and many samples include an impressive degree of dynamic responsiveness), but a typical kit takes between 10 and 16 Mbytes of memory, so take advantage of those low RAM prices while they last!

Finally on the Audio CD comes a preview of the forthcoming Liquid Grooves, which promises to show Eric Persing at his etherial and textural best. I can hardly wait.

-Paul White