Illmind’s Blap Kit 5 Review

Blap, Blap, Blap! Yo wutup Maschine Masters fam! Its ya Boy X with another review to keep all you heads “in the know” with what’s hot… and what’s not. And today we most certainly got a hot for you! Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve surely heard of !LLMIND. Which means you’ve probably also heard of Blapkits.com and are likely familiar with !LL and his work. Let me start off by saying I personally own every single Blapkit that !LLMIND has created and released.  So when I contacted him about reviewing this new Blapkit Volume 5, and he agreed, I was definitely amped.

For those of you that are no stranger to “BlapKits”, the format here is very much the same. You can expect sounds directly from !LLMINDS personal library, many of which you can actually hear used in his recent productions. Now we all know how many drum kits out there claim to do just that, and while some actually deliver, the vast majority do not. Well NO worries with this one. !LLMIND has certainly delivered yet again, with 130+ sounds that I guarantee will help take your production to the next level. His motto “Better Drums, More Placements” is no exaggeration, and I am pretty sure that those of you who downloaded any of the five “leaks” prior to the release, would happily agree. I know I do.

So what can you expect in Volume 5? For starters, it’s the same price of $24.99, a similar file count, the same format of all the sounds being in one folder (which I really like), and most importantly, the same punchy, gritty and grimy drums synonymous with !LLMINDS production style. There IS one thing that is very different with Volume 5 however. In !LLMINDS own words, this blapkit is the “Outcast” of the Blapkit family. The “outspoken sibling” of the Blapkit brotherhood. Why?  Well, most of the previous BlapKits focused mainly on raw, unprocessed, un-layered drums. Volume 5 on the other hand offers up heavily layered, processed and effected sounds. But make absolutely no mistake about it, this is certainly a welcomed change.  The layering of the sounds is flawless, and they all mesh well and feel “meant to be” rather than forced or mis-matched. All of the sounds in this volume are sure to help you create some dope textures within your tracks. I can definitely see these becoming my “go to” drums for the foreseeable future. I’m MAD picky with my drums, so that’s saying something!

Of the 130+ sounds in this kit, you can expect to find hard hitting & punchy kicks, snares that slap, slick claps unlike any you have, gritty hi-hats, some sick percussion, dope drum rolls, some phat sub-Bass tones and !LL even included some weird riser type sounds, and a few “vocal grunts”.  Man, those Vocal Grunts tho! I would love to purchase an entire kit of just those!(hint hint). But you certainly can’t sleep on the Drum Loops either. Like everything else in this kit, the drum loops are hand crafted and played by !LLMIND using drums from his own library, not just random breaks thrown in just for the hell of it. Then he actually EQ’s and processes them to boot! Speaking of which, all the drum sounds were sampled into an Ensoniq ASR-10 and Akai S-20 samplers at 12Bit/33Khz, so rest assured they have that warmth, grit and punch we have all come to expect from Blapkits. That said, the sounds still come as 16Bit/44K WAV format, are mastered just under 0DB, and are compatible with any DAW.

It goes without saying that in my opinion !LLMIND has outdone himself, yet again. Believe me when I tell you, if something sucks, I am NOT afraid to let y’all know. That said, there is absolutely NO wack anything in this kit. So do yourself a favor and head on over to www.BlapKits.com to cop this one ASAP! And be sure to snatch up the other BlapKits in the BlapKit Brotherhood as well. Trust me, Your production will thank you for it!

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Triple-X