Nok Cultural Ensemble — Tape Percussion

Name: Nok Cultural Ensemble — Tape Percussion
Price: 29 USD
Author: Spitfire Audio

by Spitfire Audio · Drum Instrument · Afro-percussion and dub library

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Nok Cultural Ensemble — Tape Percussion by Spitfire Audio

Tape Percussion is a percussion library from Spitfire Audio and Nok Cultural Ensemble, recorded to tape at Ariwa Studios in London.

It mixes African percussion, drum kits, loops and dub-style atmospheres across 101 presets. It costs $29.

Best for: Drums, Sound Design. Genres: Electronic & EDM, Hip-Hop & Trap, Jazz, Acoustic & Classical.

Keywords: ensemble, acoustic drums, experimental, round-robin, mallets, preset-driven, sample-based, simple, sound design, tempo-synced, textures.

What it does

Tape Percussion is a percussion library from Spitfire Audio and the Nok Cultural Ensemble, led by drummer Edward Wakili-Hick. It sets African and Afro-diasporic percussion in a dub and free-jazz frame, recorded to tape at Ariwa Studios in London with dub producers Mad Professor and Joe Ariwa.

Full Kits: five drum kits, four acoustic jazz kits and one electronic kit, sampled at three dynamics with three round robins.
Kit Loops: eight tempo-synced loops from 80 to 170 bpm, with their stems mapped across the keyboard so you can play parts alone or together.
Percussion: six West African percussion patches, including kpanlogo, ravann, shekere and agogo.
Atmospheres and Tonal Warps: two patches of experimental looped sounds and FX, and 13 tonal warps that turn tuned percussion into synth-like pads and melodic sounds; 69 atmospheric scenes in all.
Processed Signal fader: fades from the dry recording to the live dub effects captured at Ariwa.
Shaping controls: attack and release, tape saturation, and a reverb with seven impulse responses from studio rooms to large halls.

It runs in its own free Spitfire plugin (NKS compatible). There are audio demos but no trial.

Source: Spitfire Audio product page

When to use it

Tape Percussion is a small, fixed library with one strong flavour: jazzy kits and West African hand percussion that can be pushed into dub-soaked textures with one fader. Compared with Battery 4 and XO, it gives you no way to build kits from your own samples, but it ships sounds and an Ariwa dub chain neither of them has. Unlike EZdrummer 3, it has no groove library or song tools, only eight loops at fixed tempos. It is a cheap add-on for colour rather than a main drum instrument.

Best for: dub and afrobeat-influenced beats, percussion layers on top of other drums, and textured loops and pads for electronic or score work.
Genres: dub, electronic, hip-hop, jazz and EDM.
Look elsewhere if: you need a general-purpose drum kit or a sampler for your own sounds; EZdrummer 3, Battery 4 or XO suit that.
Tip: trigger single loop layers as toppers over another drum pattern; for other tempos, bounce the loop to audio and time-stretch it in the DAW.

What producers say

Reviewed as an unusual, inexpensive and easy instrument that covers more genres than its jazz roots suggest.

Sound On Sound (Paul White, 2022) gave it 4 out of 5, praising the "super simple" interface, the round-robin acoustic sounds and how far the effects push the jazzy raw sounds towards abstract textures.
Criticisms: the loops play at fixed tempos, so you need the DAW's time-stretch to reuse them, and there is little to adjust compared with deeper instruments.

Sound On Sound review

Where to buy

Spitfire Audio: $29
PluginFox: $29

Tutorials and reviews

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