My first review is for the Jake One “Snare Jordan Kit”. As we all know, Jake One is no stranger to the producer scene. For me, he’s got more of an infamous, vintage, dirty, raw, boom-bap sound to him. I personally, with what I like to do, am all about these types of sounds. It sounds like it’s straight from the sewers. I’m going to take a different approach from most reviews here and break them down by each piece of content you get…

Snares/Claps – All together in this kit, I counted 10 claps, and 47 snares. Let me get my biggest complaint out of the way, and it’s not even pertaining specifically to this kit, but this kit also has them. I get the idea of stacking snares to make a crunchier, heavier, more full snare. But with files particularly to the kind of ‘snare peeeew’, ‘snare money’, and ‘snare lend me a ear’, I can not stand when they have these half cut off sounds to them. Fortunately, this kit is rare with these mishaps. As a whole, the snares and claps are as diverse as any drum kit out there. They range from the crunchy, to the reverberated, to the low-fidelity crisp, as well as the vintage “straight off the vinyl” snap sounds to them. There is definitely enough flavor in these to create anything from heavy hitting, to the somber melodic swing sound.

Overall score – 8/10

(Turn down your monitors/headphones when first listening to ‘snare monitor blower’, thank me later.)

Kicks – 43 total kicks from in the Jake One kit. This might be my favorite part of the kit.. Everything is well done here.. You get good eq’d variations of the heavier low end kicks, very full punchy mid kicks that scream for a nasty bass line, thin kicks, and your slight reverb punch kicks. I’m personally probably pushing around 2-3000 drum sounds, as far as kit wise, this might crack my top 3 favorite kit to go to for any kick sound. Every one of these kicks with the exception of ‘kick periwinkle’ (see my complaint in the snare section) can easily be used in any creation. Stacked, or laid out individually, for me, it’s as good as it gets. It’s refreshing to go through a folder of kicks like these and have them sampled clean with just a sprinkle of dirt in it. It’s definitely a hip hop producer gold mine.

Overall score – 9.5/10

Hi-hats – The weakest part of the kit. It didn’t help that I randomly selected ‘hat clip set’. An 8kb hi hat, with no sound that I can hear. With 23 hats (4 open), there’s about 4 or 5 that sound like they just cut off or leave you hanging. That’s where this kit struggles the most, it’s got the least amount of sounds with the most throwaways. Outside of that, you get your basic regular tap hats, light cymbal based, and chopped off the record. Believe me, the good hi hats in this kit, are just that… Good. All in all, I can’t say I’m disappointed, their is definitely some material here to utilize when loading the Maschine up, it’s just not the home run the snares and the kicks are.

Overall score – 6/10

Misc (Tambs, loops, etc) – The percussion loops in this are nasty. Point blank. The tambourine percussion, the 2 drum loops, and the sticks loop are super fresh. Perfect for layering and giving your track a more raw sound to it. They are sampled very cleanly and can easily be time stretched to fit any beat or atmosphere. The tambourines are as on point as any I’ve heard in all of the !llmind kits, so for me, that’s a winner. The only problem I have with it, is that there isn’t enough of this stuff in this kit. But that’s just me being selfish.

Overall score – 9/10

I’d like to thank everyone for checking out my first review on Maschinemasters.com. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to be a part of this as I’ve followed the website for awhile. I hope you all dug my different approach to the reviews by breaking down each segment of the kit. Just trying to be different. Catch me @maddenmiles via twitter as well as http://www.soundcloud.com/maddenmiles ! I look forward to connecting with you all!
Until next time..

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Peace! -M