Making Emotionally Resonant Samples: Meet Splice Label Touch Loops

Chris: Sure, I have an artist project called Tropics and have predominantly made music under this name for a number of years. I sing, compose, mix everything - It flows between electronic/indie/leftfield music. I’ve released records on Planet Mu, Innovative Leisure and Because music. I also recently started my own record label called Modern Entity.

Richard: I also run an audio post production company, called Got Moves, providing music and sound design for films and adverts. Creatively, I produce and write under the name Violent Bloom. It’s a collaborative project, taking influence from everything like Deftones to Nick Hakim. It scratches the itch of combining guitars with electronic elements in Ableton.

Chris: Haha it’s taken a while but I’d say we are masters of the timezones now. However, the way it came about, I find very serendipitous and a great example of how good things are often a result of timing. I was working on my third Tropics album (Nocturnal Souls) and someone had put me onto creating sample packs to generate a little extra income - I briefly looked into sample companies and often found it all a little corny and uninspiring. Not just the sounds but the presentation as well.

I started making packs that fell into the “future electronic / alt-rnb” kinda sound, Rich worked for a company that was licensing them from me - and I felt we connected on the more forward-thinking side of electronic music. I started telling him ideas I had for how I would stylise a sample company; soundwise, visually etc.. and I feel like you just understood it all straight away, Rich..

Richard: Yep, perfectly put. As with all of the best things in life. We just stumbled into it but ran with the concept. There was a clear direction from the start on how we wanted this to look & feel. ...And having the experience of working in the industry, I knew how to get the company rolling quite quickly, whilst maintaining strict standards. It was a perfect combination of the technical (myself) with Chris’ creative flair for sound & visual design.

Chris: It’s hard to consolidate it into one sound - as both Rich and I’s tastes span across a handful of genres. But it’s certainly built on efforts to produce a thread of quality and emotional tone that ties everything together.

I feel like I’ve had some deep chapters in life that have always been closely woven to music. Whether it was discovering Air, Aphex Twin, Massive Attack as a pre-teen, turning 18 while being obsessed with hip-hop, raving to techno in my early 20’s in Berlin. These have all created a deep etching of nostalgia that I feel needs to be upheld and represented with similar depth when creating these types of music. Pulling from what you know, what you’ve experienced, what you’ve heard.

Richard: As Chris mentioned, the label has been built on our tastes and influences. I think we both have such respect for the genres that we produce, both personally, and as a business, meaning all packs trigger something emotionally in us.

We said from the beginning that we would always create sounds that we love, and if a genre didn’t trigger us emotionally, we’d leave that to another producer to create. We’d rather focus on what we adore than create a mediocre pastiche of something that we don’t truly love.

Chris: I mean that sounds crazy, I didn’t even realise! When Touch Loops first started, I was deep into my third Tropics album - the record was quite conceptual for me - a result of crate digging rare italian 70’s 80’s soundtracks and forgotten early synth library music - much of this is very jazz-adjacent and has been utilised by some of the best samplers in history; J-Dilla, Madlib, 9th Wonder to name a few..

Due to all this, the research was top of mind at Touch Loops’ inception - hence why our initial years leaned heavily into a landscape of psychedelic, vintage synths, jazz and hip-hop.

There’s such richness and texture to those genres that my ears were very tuned to at the time - It provided a foundation to how we launched our label, we wanted to honor that in our ethos - We aimed to collaborate with instrumentalists and composers who were open to us recording things to tape, manipulating sounds further in studios to get that real vintage feel, if not working with artists who owned and were masters of that sort of equipment themselves.

Richard: Wow yeah, 10 years is a crazy thought. Chris and I actually started working in the sample industry pre Splice which again, is wild. As mentioned, stylistically we were very much living in the analog / live instrument world back then. As the years have passed, we’ve leaned into the ways that these classic genres interact with new genres. Whether that’s redefining the 808 in Trap, or the way that modern pop artists are sampling the sounds of the 2000’s. It keeps you on your toes and focuses you as a producer to remain inspired. Music is ever changing and evolving, but that’s what makes it eternally inspiring.

Chris: I initially thought we’d be a flash in the pan, but looking back we just kinda beat a lot of others to the punch in this new era of call it “vintage-inspired’” sample companies, where you can now see a lot have followed suit. There’s more of an emphasis on the overall package, a thorough audio-visual design process, which has always enticed me personally. It’s great to see the knock on effect.. I’ve always said that if this is something that saturates the industry, it has to be high quality and with high feeling. I look back at previous decades and while there were great drum breaks floating around, most sample libraries I came across felt a little two-dimensional and jingle-sounding.

Richard: The main difference has been the way that samples are integrated into your DAW, plus, the way that producers source individual sounds. Splice’s integration has become a key tool for so many producers in the way that they write and produce. Co-incidentally, what’s been great for us is that we’ve always had the same mantra from day 1. ‘Every loop should be inspiring’.

It’s easy to fill packs with filler content that will never get used. But even from the early days of Touch Loops, we believed that this wasn’t fair to the customer, hence we ran strict checking processes on content. Now with subscriptions, this is even more crucial but aligns with our thoughts from the very start.

Chris: I’m often inspired where things converge and cross over. At the moment the breadth of ideas coming from the Hyper-pop world and maybe even a little of Phonk via its grittiness, making its way aesthetically into more downtempo/trip-hop, RnB and also techno by influencing higher tempos and intensity. That’s interesting to me. I feel like when I see something merging as a natural result of cultures hitting peaks, that’s where I love to get involved. I’m always up for a new challenge when it comes to creating also, which I feel lends itself to these moments in music.

Richard: For me, it’s inspiring to see the evolution of genres and the way that younger producers are interacting with packs. Years ago, samples were often seen as a faux pas, whereas now there’s a real artistry in the way that you work with and manipulate sound. It’s inspiring to see this level of artistry being recognised next to a musician's ability to play an instrument, for example.

To be honest, having the chance to make samples that could be the foundation of someone else's journey into music is an absolute pleasure. That’s all the inspiration that I need.

Chris: Yes, so following on from the last question - we’ve gotten pretty experimental and created a pack that is influenced rhythmically by the fusion of electro, techno and hyper-pop, while lacing in moments of deep melody and melancholy via pads and chords (something I seem to never be able to get enough off). We’ve aimed to produce it with the stylistic nature of what I mentioned before - So I hope that comes through and I hope it becomes something people enjoy and lean into!

Richard: As Chris mentioned, this pack has been a great opportunity to stretch our production legs. We’ve brought years of techno experience (at slower tempos) and brought them into this modern context. It’s a pack that blends a lot of breadth of styles but still has that Touch Loops feel.

Chris: It’s hard to tell, but as I say, we are always inspired by the ever shifting of sounds. We love to deep dive, research music and always aim to bring our twist on things when we feel we can add strength.

I’m excited for more genres converging in 2026 and as a result bringing new limelight. We’re glad to have such an opportunity to showcase these things, not only with our creative outputs, but that of all the wonderful, talented producers we work with.

Richard: We’re forever on the look out for new sounds and inspirations. We’ve been mapping out the next 12 months of packs, working with some Touch Loops favourites whilst also bringing fresh blood into the business - it’s an exciting time to be involved with music. Keep an eye out for new presets, deeper exploration of The Touch Loops sound as well as a few left turns that people might not expect.