Underground Garage
TEKNIKS AUDIO CD Rating: **** 4/5 Stars
Whenever a new musical style emerges from obscurity into the mainstream, there seems to be an immediate urge to define all its different sub‑genres. Often before most people have even had time to digest a shift in the art form, we are bombarded with distinctions that can, at times, seem confusing and even petty. What, for instance, is the real difference between hard house and handbag? Jungle and drum and bass? Or garage and UK garage? To add to the confusion, producer Damien Egan (of the excellent Millennium Garage) has effectively 'gone solo' and released another top‑notch sampling product in the form of Underground Garage. The main difference between UK garage, millennium garage, underground garage and standard garage is that here you pay for your parking on the way out. I thank you.
Getting down to business, we find a familiar construction‑kit sample CD, offering 30 construction kits featuring all the elements you would expect to find (drums, percussion, bass, FX and keyboard), delivered both as full‑mix chunks and also as individual solo lines. All the hallmarks of garage production techniques (clean and busy rhythm tracks, heavy on the swing groove) are present and correct. With an impeccable ear for cool drum programming and an interesting palette of drum sounds to draw from, Damien has presented users with an impressive and immediate slice of authentic garage material.
Tempos fall into just five ranges — 131, 132, 133, 134 and 135bpm — but within each tempo set there is an intelligent and largely successful attempt to stretch the parameters of garage to include a good range of different sub‑styles. There are the obvious Craig David‑a‑likes, which will satisfy those looking for a bit of laid‑back mainstream inspiration, as well as a few full‑on 'experimental' construction kits which at times touch on acid jazz and even grittier jungle forms, while still maintaining a tight and elegant R'n'B flavour.
The deconstructed solo lines and single drum hits reveal brief insights into the gear used in the production of this CD. Stalwarts such as the Korg Trinity and Emu Orbit/Planet Phatt are on display, but don't let that fool you into thinking we're dealing with a mere preset basher here — we're not, as the drum tracks will testify. If you're the kind of programmer who keeps their quantise setting stuck on 16, some time alone with Underground Garage is enough to make you want to spend a day playing with all those lovely groove templates you have in your computer software, but never thought to check out.
The construction kits offer a good deal of flexibility, giving you access to all their constituent elements, including individual drum samples. While it's a big pain to sample and chop these manually (CD‑ROM soon, please!), this does provide tons of room for tweaking and editing. The disc wraps up with 13 tracks of instrument multisamples, which are well suited to the genre (clavs, organs, squidgy basses) but don't really shine as brightly in the originality department as the rhythm programming.
All in all, Underground Garage is an expert, soulful and inspiring collection of sample material which goes to show that small, home‑grown production companies are just as capable of putting together desirable sample products as the big boys. Paul Farrer