Review: OFF THE GRID by Sampletraxx

On a dark and stormy night danger invades our safety and forces us, Off The Grid!!! A no-holds-barred organic and true-to-life sound design library built with purpose.

Jump to the Videos of OFF THE GRID by Sampletraxx

Jump to the Demos of OFF THE GRID by Sampletraxx

Review: OFF THE GRID by Sampletraxx

Sampletraxx is back at it with another genre-defining library. Building on their already deep catalog of cinematic sounds and effects, OFF THE GRID, is poised to give your listeners, chills, jumps, and screams. Partnering again with French sound designer Julien Caraz, OFF THE GRID follows their hit library (MONOCHROME). This library boasts 450 loops, 340 One-shots for a whopping total of 2.9 gigs of new. and unique content.

OFF THE GRID normally sells for $99 from Sampletraxx

Thoughts

The name OFF THE GRID should speak for itself. This is a no-holds-barred organic and true-to-life sound design library built with purpose. The field recordings are dark, suspenseful, evocative and dynamic. It’s everything you want out of a mood-building toolkit. The library contains common categories such as Braams, Drones, Heavy Hits, Pulses, Risers, and Textures. The names however are the only thing common about the library. OFF THE GRID innovates by combining Aleatoric scoring with sound design syncopation giving the listener something new. A colleague asked how I would describe this library and I said, “Imagine having a really bad-ass 69’ Chevy Camaro with a 454, V8 engine and a simple humdrum muffler. It’ll look cool, but sound weak. Take that same car and add two premium pipes two it and now you’re scaring the neighbors and waking the dead!”

It’s designed to be familiar in text only because the context is what’s important. You have to think of your track like it’s a living thing and it feels fear and danger. The Braams represent the screams. The Drones make up the fear. The Heavy Hits are the bones breaking. The pulses are the heartbeat. The Risers are the hairs standing up and the textures sculpt the interaction between all of it. I appreciate how well thought out this library is. It presents a specific genre and never veers off course. The result is an amount of dynamism that keep you interested and searching for different combinations between the samples.

The Pulses folder contains Stems and full mixes which are very helpful to get you off the ground. I would have liked to see the library housed in a player instead of a wave folder, but the meta-data makes drag and drop easy and fast. My particular favorites are the unique takes on the Braams and the evolving nature of the drones. They are jarring and eerie never really resting on a single tone or note. My recommendation for writing with this library is to think viscerally. Discover the sounds that could build a person, place or thing out of your scene/score/track. Do not try to drop samples into the timelines based on the length. Match up the wave patterns to blend styles naturally. If you do that, You’ll find this library so much fun to write and sculpt with.

Facts

2,9Gb of content
Immediate fast download
100% royalty-free – single-user
For a multi-user license contact us
790 Wav sounds 48/24 (450 loops/stems – 340 one-shot)

OFF THE GRID normally sells for $99 from SAMPLETRAXX

Demos of OFF THE GRID by Sampletraxx

Videos of OFF THE GRID by Sampletraxx

Contributor Nick Rivera reviews OFF THE GRID by Sampletraxx
On a dark and stormy night danger invades our safety and forces us, Off The Grid!!! A no-holds-barred organic and true-to-life sound design library built with purpose.