Sound Quality 5 STARS
Selection 5 STARS
Formatting 5 STARS
Bang for the Buck 5 STARS


FORMAT: Audio CDs, plus Roland, Akai, Samplecell, K-2000, Emu, & Ensoniq CD-ROMs.

OVERVIEW: Contemporary, Dance/Hip-Hop, African, & World percussion loops and single hits.

CONTENTS: Four audio CDs. 650+ loops, 100+ single-instrument samples. Loop categories include Mozambique, Charleston, cha-cha, hip-hop, scratch, tribal vocal, industrial dance, soukous, African, samba, Hawaiian, solo patterns, and more. Single instruments samples include bamboo tube, bell, bongo, bottle, clave, conga, dumbek, frame drum, gong, log drum, cuica, shaker, spoons, tabla, talking drum, triangle, wood block, and so on.

From tribal stomps to contemporary dance spices, Supreme Beats is just that: Supreme. With four CDs and a gorgeous 51-page booklet, this is one of the most exhaustive and impressive percussion packages we've seen. And it sounds even better than it looks.

Bashiri Johnson (whose past employers include Madonna, Whitney Houston, Donald Fagen, and C&C Music Factory) plays his butt off on these discs. Nothing fake about these grooves; it's a feast of human feel, energy, and emotion. Over 650 stereo loops and 100 single hits are spread across four CDs, featuring Johnson and an all-star supporting cast of Cyro Baptista, Luis Conte, Kimati Dinizulu, Daoud Woods, and others. If you're looking for standard drum kit loops, though, or samples of kicks, snares, toms, and cymbals, you're barking up the wrong tree. This is strictly a percussion disc, Holmes. Congas, bongos, shakers, cowbells--you get the picture.

Johnson is generous with his loop lengths; some of our favorites range from 4 to 16 bars long. Listening closely, we detected that certain of the longer items are actually two repeats of a shorter loop, but the majority seem to have been played straight through, not cut and pasted.

Supreme Beats uses the "groove construction set" approach to formatting. Following almost every loop the single-instrument tracks that it's made of, which allows you to edit or remix the patterns. If you can find beats that you think will match, it's easy to layer a conga and talking drum track from one loop with the vocal chants of another, and so on. Very, very cool. Loops are usually played at several tempos-- most often 93, 108, and 120 bpm. Single samples of the loop instruments can be found at the end of each CD in a section called" The Hits."

The first of the 4 discs, Contemporary, kicks off with stomping feet, clattering angklungs, bamboo brushes, and huff-and-puff vocal rhythms. One of our favorites is the Tropical Drum Talking loop. Get down, Bashiri. Other disc highlights include the percussive footwork of tapster Hinton Battle on Charleston Tap, the pulsing Mozambique loop (timbales, congas, and guiro), & the hilarious Bash Novel (slide whistles atop clickety-clackety spoons atop a twangy jaw harp bass).

A couple of acoustic oddities found their way onto this disc. Check out the instrument list for Vacume [sic] Groove and you'll come across such goodies as Darbuka, talking drum, bell bag, and, no joke, radiator. It's not the only automotive instrument featured on Supreme Beats, either (a brake drum makes an appearance on the 4th disc).

For songwriters and sample-savvy performers, the loops-within-the-loops are as valuable as the full-featured ensemble versions. A solo conga pattern might sound plain when compared to it's densely packed counterpart, but simple loops like these are worth their weight in microchips. Layer one of these raw tracks with a stiff drum machine beat and you'll quickly learn the value of live percussion.

Don't be misled by their titles; the 2nd CD, called Dance/Hip-Hop, might bring to mind TR-808 kicks, synthetic hi-hats, crackly JB hits, shrieks, & so on. But with the exception of a few vinyl-sounding scratch effects, most of the material featured here is played on congas, surdos, bongos, ocean drums & the like. This doesn't mean that the grooves aren't funky. Check out the ultra-danceable Hip-Hop Triangle Gong loop, or the Tribal Vocal groove (with chest-pounding vocals, shakers, and clattering iron). Delicious.

In general, organic instruments are the name of the game on Supreme Beats. With the exception of one or two unidentifiable sound effects, most instruments are of the unplugged persuasion. One of our favorite percussion instruments, the talking drum, is well represented on this disc. In both ensemble and solo contexts, its pitch bendy grooves are a knockout. If you're looking for a new musical flavor, you might try the twangy Hip-Hop Berimbau loop. The Berimbau - a buzzy stringed twanger - is an excellent match for the Turtle Udu, bongos, cuica, and tambourine in this context.

While we locked into the grooves on all four discs, the African disc really grabbed us by the throat. Infectious ethnic stomps can be found from start to finish, including such standouts as the chanting, ensemble driven Wosa, E Toi E Toi, and Yebo. With the latter, both rhythm and vocal sub-tracks are provided.

We had a ton of fun layering these loops with a few of our demos. In one case, we took track 36, Gyana High Life, and dumped it into the bridge of a driving rock song. (Sorry, Bashiri.) It took that once ho-hum section to an entirely new place. If you're playing to a click, try layering a loop like this into a bridge. Chances are, your leather-clad bandmates will drop their jaws. When working with resources like Supreme Beats, half the fun is experimenting with cross-breeding. What can we layer with what? Samba percussion with techno sequences make interesting bedfellows.

The final disc, World, kicks off with a few solo conga patterns before launching into a loop called Island Congo. Ah...sandy beach, blue sky, hammock, fruity libation. Er, sorry. One of our favorites on disc four was track 24, Spoons. Since Soundgarden's 1994 hit "Spoonman" reintroduced the utensil, musicians from pole to pole have been raiding their kitchen drawers in search of a fresh, affordable percussive voice. Churning a killer spoon line is no easy chore, though - try it yourself sometime. We'll go the easy route and use one of these pre-fab phrases. And when we grow tired of 'em we'll slice and dice them into fresh grooves with our trusty sample editor.

Another of our favorite instruments, the Udu drum, is spotlighted on disc four. Tracks 34-42, called Just Udus, feature Johnson soloing atop the funky, blob-like device.

Before wrapping up, we'd like to commend the Supreme Beats team for a job well done in the documentation department. The 51-page booklet that accompanies the CDs provides not only such data as disc contents, track numbers, tempos, and so on, but also photographs of the instruments and background information on the players, the gear, and the recording techniques. Heck, they even gave the book an index--a rarity in the third-party sounds worlds. Outstanding.

No review would be complete without pointing out a few weaknesses--but as far as we can tell, this package has none. It's that good. Sure, $300 for the audio box-set isn't exactly small change; maybe offering each CD separately would be a comfortable solution for those on a tight budget. But if you've ever hired a professional musician for a session, especially one of Bashiri Johnson's caliber, you probably paid them that much for one groove. There's enough material here to feed an army of samplers. Bottom Line: If we had three thumbs, we'd turn 'em all up. Supreme Beats is a winner.

--Greg Rule