Review: Rhythmic Revolution for Kontakt by 8DIO

Today I want to have a look and review a library that it’s coming from one of the major library providers in the market. I’m talking about the new Kontakt library released by 8DIO called „Rhythmic Revolution“.

Rhythmic Revolution isn’t your standard percussion or drum library. Instead, it takes a quite interesting approach towards randomization and the different ways that sound can bring rhythm into a song or composition. If you’re interested to hear it in action had over to the 8DIO website where you can find a quite extensive demonstration video, I’ll be waiting here for you…

A different approach…

As you have maybe seen in the video, the way it is demonstrated makes a really big point about using the random function as much as possible.

8DIO seems to have made a brave step here, which I absolutely applaud, by reducing the amount of source material, instead they increased the options for sound manipulations.

It seems almost like a gentle reminder for us creators saying “while you have terabytes over terabytes of sample materials, high-quality recordings, and surgical tools don’t forget the experimental side of music.”.

At the same time, Rhythmic Revolution also makes it easy, even for those of us that at times might feel intimidated by too many knobs and faders, by implementing the before mentioned randomization button that doesn’t require more than one click, and thereby seems small, safe, and inviting while we explore this library.

For those of us who feel absolutely at home anywhere with at least twenty knobs buttons and faders to play with, 8DIO has provided these options as well of course.

To me, this invitation to discover sound is extremely welcome, and I enjoyed playing with this library and trying out different approaches to see where it can take me.

The Interface

Upon first opening Rhythmic Revolution, we are greeted with a well-organized but pretty full interface, which to some might look intimidating. Once understood all the scariness falls away and what’s left is a very accessible design with a good workflow.

In the “main” view (image above) the interface is compartmentalized into four sections, of which each represents one sound core or layer. In the center-circle sits our selection menu for each layer, and branching out from there are the additional global control parameters.

Each of the four layers also houses its own volume control, solo and mute button, pan dial, cumin dial, half and double tempo button, reverse function, and filter settings. Thereby making all the essential tools available at your fingertips if you need to make any quick adjustments to a preset or a randomized patch.

In the “transients” view we are simply presented with one not for each layer to manipulate the transients directly.

The “envelope followers” view provides access to a bit crusher, and a distortion unit for each of the four layers, and the “convolution” view lets us choose not just reverb, but also other convolution algorithms from almost 300 presets, which by the way are well worth exploring.

The Source

Now just because the amount of source material is reduced doesn’t mean that it is there for less interesting, or less full of possibilities. The source material that is there, is extremely refreshing and inspiring while being of the highest quality.

The available banks for the four layers contain several categories such as air, body, percussion, drums, ethnic, metal, plans, plastic, and water sounds.

Each of those categories holds several banks, sometimes more than twenty, of source samples. These are laid out over the keyboard, one octave per category, so each bank contains roughly 12 source loops.

Additionally, 8DIO does provide its chaos effect rack, as with almost all 8DIO libraries, and thereby plenty of ways to also globally mangle the sound further if desired.

Conclusion

Amongst the many libraries with a more experimental approach and a randomization function, this is definitely one of my favorites. I find it extremely inspiring, a great tool for starting something new or layering over an existing project to create interest. A lot of the sound sources a very interesting, and I even found it educational to randomize the patch and then figure out how the result was created.

I also very much enjoy the implementation of the random function. I noticed randomizing doesn’t affect the selected sound category for each layer, and I like that because it offers a small amount of control over how much random I want to apply. I would’ve preferred if I could custom select more parameters or unselect them from the randomization. Apart from that, there is very little to nothing that caught my attention in an unpleasant way.

Given its relatively low price point, I would recommend this library to almost everyone. It is definitely an “extra”, and not fundamental, but for that, it is very versatile, great for sound design, and for adding an extra layer of unconventional sound and rhythm over your productions.