Review: Sample Magic Chillwave Guitars

Product: Chillwave Guitars
Developer: Sample Magic
Format: Digital download in WAV, Apple Loops, or Rex2 format.
Price: £14.95
Demo:  Audio demo on the Product Page

Today I'll be having a listen to the "Chillwave Guitars" library from Sample Magic.  This is a collection of 284 guitar loops divided into both processed and unprocessed versions, should you care to apply your own effects chain.  A variety of vintage acoustic and electric guitars were used in the recording sessions, and in the case of the effected loops, processed heavily with reverbs, chorus, delay, and the like.

Musically, the riffs are fairly minimal and "open" sounding.  These are less the sort of riff that is going to be the main hook in your song and more the sort of thing that adds a special extra something to inspire and build the rest of your arrangement around - arpeggios, melody fragments, textures.  While simple, the parts are played extremely well and sound thoroughly professional.

Throughout, the guitar sounds themselves bring to mind the distinctive tones of the Cure, the Cocteau Twins, or even the types of guitar tones all over Junkie XL's "Today" album.  While the influence of a lot of the tones are reminiscent of the 80's, the recording and production quality is definitely current. "Warm", "Dreamy", and "Atmospheric" are all descriptors that come to mind.   Surprisingly, given the atmospheric nature of these riffs, most of them loop pretty seamlessly.

Given the almost comically-short shelf life for most electronic music genres, you may wonder if this library will be useful to those outside the chillwave genre and the answer is a resounding yes.  Producers of ambient, soundtrack and commercial music, dreampop, downtempo, and other genres where dreamy guitars are a must, will all find something to like here.   [9/10]