S1 x M-Phazes Drum Boutique Vol. 1 Review

What’s good MM fam! Super producers often get as much shine in todays music game as the artists. S1 and M-Phazes are prime examples of why this is the case. These two display a versatility and ear for detail that’s amazing in their production. It should be no surprise that both of those attributes translated VERY well in their transition into the sound design game.

The thing that hit me as I previewed the sounds is how much work was put into each sound. You can easily hear the extra detail that went into sculpting the character of each sample with layering, tweaking and sound effects. Each folder within the kit contains sounds created by S1 and M-Phazes. 20 kicks, 20 snares, 21 loops, 6 extras. They did 10 drums a piece for the snare and kick folder. M-Phazes did 11 sounds and S1 did 10 for the loops folder. You can hear the distinct difference between the two producers’ sounds, which complement each other well for this drum boutique S1 uses Protools and M-Phazes uses Cubase. Both are masters of their craft and show it in this kit.

As always I start with the kicks folder, because I feel snares are easier to get right. If you can get kicks that have meat/ weight to them that punch/ knock without being muddy…….then the rest of the kit should be on point as well. Of course, as expected, these kicks KNOCK! Some have vinyl crackle, some have more sub undertones…..ALL of them have their own character. I loaded a few up in Maschine and made a simple beat. These kicks are layered and can be used as is, without any extra tweakage.

My favorite two snares are M-Phazes MP_Snare04 which sounded like he’d tapped into a well of eternal reverb, and S1’s S1_Snare04 with just the right amount of distortion and a touch of reverb. Now to the snares, as I mentioned earlier, creating decent snares is not at all a Creating unique snare takes a good ear however. As was the case with the kicks, these snares are crafted very well! As with many of the kick samples you can hear extra added sizzle and different ambiances layered in. Some of the snares have really big ambiance or extra sound layered in such as percussion. Over all these kicks and snare are very unique in their tonality. My favorite kick is a sub by M-Phazes MP_Kick08 and a vinyl crackling, punchy kick that knocks from S1 (S1_Kick04).

The loops folder contains some really trippy tweaked out drum synth and percussion loops as well a few regular heavy original drum breaks. For the most part S1 hit us with 10 tweaked out drum/ percussion loops. I’m talking…filtered drum patterns, most with vinyl crackle, some super verb’d out. This stuff is insane….and very usable! My favorite two for S1 are S1_Drum Loop 07_70bpm and S1_Drum Loop 04_65bpm (massive filter insanity on this one!) M-Phazes uses a similar approach for his loops but also includes two heavy drum patterns which space the speakers (the meat/ weight of these drums is astounding). Peep out MP_Drum Loop 01_65bpm (Add your own snare) and MP_UnFiltered Drum Loop_75bpm to see what I mean.

Last the Extras folder. There are 6 sounds here some subtle some in your face. My favorite two are S1’s tom roll (which is the only sound he did for this folder). It has big beat written all over it! Also M-pazes MP_FX04 because it starts off as a whoosh but ends with a “yeah” vocal! To top it off they further let us behind the curtain by including screen shots of their DAW’s for the kick, snare and loops folder (not the “extras” folder). These screen shots of the plugins and wav files (of some sounds) give us a idea of how they created the sounds!

In conclusion It’s great to see two veteran super producers tackling sound design. They do an AMAZING job, because they know what little nuances to add that are like ear candy for us producers! These guys need to do these type of kits on a regular basis! Until next time, Peace!

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