“THE RED CRAYON KILLER SAMPLES” by !llmind 

What’s up, MM Heads!  This is BROADWAY here to review the super HIGHLY anticipated “THE RED CRAYON KILLER SAMPLES” by the one and only !llmind.

I’ll start this review off by saying, as most of you reading this probably are, I am a tremendous fan and supporter of the !llmind brain-child that is BlapKits.com.  I once had a conversation with !llmind about his products and asked him what his goal was in the drum-kit and producer sound resource game, and he very plainly and sincerely explained that he genuinely wants to provide producers who otherwise have no means or way of amassing quality sounds the tools they need to become just as successful as any producer that is already cemented in the industry.

Not surprisingly, “The Red Crayon Killer” is an adamant example of that mission statement. 

Inspired by sci-fi/horror soundtracks of the 1970’s (i.e. Krull, etc.) !llmind took to dusting off some of the more legendary synths (Arp Odyssey, Prophet 8, Emu Proteus 2000, and everyone’s favorite little monophonic analog synth, the Minimoog) and has created 20 original high quality samples for all producers alike to dissect, sample, chop, flip, and build-upon to their hearts desire.  And ROYALTY-FREE to boot!

This kit is really terrific.  There are two things that jumped out at me immediately on this sample kit.  The first was the immediate sense of warmth to the samples and how they were recorded.  Apparently, !llmind busted out the “Frida” aka the Danish made pro ¼” Reel to Reel Lyrec PTR-1 to record all audio, and this attention to quality really is exemplified in these recordings.  The mixes and recordings are top notch, and give you an authentic nostalgic feel to the 70’s and 80’s, which was obviously the point of this project.  The second standout is the fact that unlike some sample libraries that are available, !llmind has provided the actual STEMS of each sample track.  Meaning you can REALLY truly dissect these babies in your DAW.  Load them in a session and pan that organ different, or drop that synth arpeggio but leave the rest in.  Having the STEMS for FREE really makes this a steal.  I’ve seen sample kits charge hundreds of dollars extra for stems, so the fact that !llmind was good enough to do so earns him a huge nod for this one. Having said that, one thing I would like to see is for the STEMS to be named more uniquely. At present, you would have to rename the stems if you want to use one with the same name from two different stem folders.

I have my favorites, but honestly every track is highly useable and distinctly unique from the last.  !llmind provided a wide variety of tempo’s and feels with these samples, so you will be sure to find something that inspires you.  It’s a gem and will get your creative juices flowing for sure.

My biggest pet peeve, and if there is any criticism to this kit, is that unlike some other sample kits that I have which have some tracks running a beautiful 4+ minutes, changing all throughout, !llmind kept it pretty quick, running each sample about 8 bars or so giving us roughly 30 to 45 seconds on each.  Ideally I would love to have longer tracks with different progressions.  But having the stems actually gives us the freedom to do a lot of different things with these samples, so that helps the fact that the samples run pretty short.

In conclusion, this kit gets a 100% BROADWAY seal of approval.  If they are still available, it is a MUST have for producers looking for high-quality samples while not looking for sample clearance issues.

In the true spirit of BLAP, !llmind has done it again.

Until next time, guys…100!

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-BROADWAY

@BROADWizzAY