There are known knowns; things we know about that we know about. There are known unknown; things we know about that we don’t know about. Then there are the unknown unknowns; things we don’t know about that we don’t know about. Unfortunately for me, the Urban Sprawl Kit from Echosoundworks.com fell into the latter category for me. So I went and did a little investigating to find that Echosoundworks.com offers drum kits, Kontakt libraries, Massive presets, and more. Urban Sprawl offers its users 22 Maschine ready drum kits which also come as single shot samples to create your own kits, as well as 76 MIDI loops to place into your DAW. Everything from kicks, snare, hats, toms, and claps will be found packed into this kits goodness.

There is a wide assortment of kicks which you will find delightful. While some are very punchy with a great thump on the bottom end, some create their own space with a touch of reverb and a little more top end. You’ll find yourself using these kicks in whichever style of music it is you create due to the versatility of these kicks. Some kicks with less bottom end will sure be complemented when layered with a punchier kick.

The claps in Urban Sprawl to me seem to be the standout in this kit. While some are thundering, demanding that they aren’t layered, some are more subtle and you may want to layer with one of the many awesome snares inside this kit as well. You’ll find few of the claps and snares to have slight reverb on them. Normally I’m not a huge fan of this, but in the case of Urban Sprawl it was added to the right sounds to give them that extra flavor (well done guys).

Also, most of these sounds come pre-loaded as Maschine ready kits. So you can quickly and easily get a kit together and start banging out. The one and only thing that had me a little upset is that some of kits upon loading I had to locate a few samples manually. This was due to the fact that some of the sounds were in separate folders inside of the Maschine kit folder. It was literally not a huge deal as a simple drag and drop of the correct sample on the pad fixed that. I then resaved the kits with the sounds in them and had no problem on the reload.

At the end of the day, Urban Sprawl is one of the hottest kits available in my opinion. Its versatility, and hard hitting sounds make it a must have for your sound library. On a scale of 1-16 pads, Urban Sprawl comes in at a solid 13. Do yourself a favor and grab this kit today!

James Jaxin (@jaxin414)

Forum Moderator MaschineMasters.com

Product Review Specialist MaschineMasters.com