Plughugger.com Review of Circuit Bent Sounds Vol. 2

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review 2009-11-25

Plughugger.com Review of Circuit Bent Sounds Vol. 2

Although I rarely admit it in person, I am a sucker for trends. Their qualities aside, they always share the same irresistable quality: movement. Whatever it is, cool, daring, weird or whatever, it's always with the feeling of something fresh. You're standing there, on the very frontline of evolution/mutation/degradation of music and audio.

Some trends evolve while some just fades into nothingness and are forgotten except for a few hardcore fans (oh yes, Gabber is still being made). The phenomena of circuit bent sounds is most definitely a trend that was so hot a few months ago, and when it just was about to pop out from my consciousness - Loopmasters release a follow-up to their library Circuit Bent Sounds.

For those who do not know what circuit bent sounds are, here's a pretty accurate clip of the madness involved. In short, circuit bending is the term used when a someone takes an electronic device that can produce sounds and alter the electronics inside in order to create sounds in ways that the original creators probably fought very hard to avoid. A keyboard for a two-year old child should sound soft and playful and not like when the mixer blows up on a concert with The Prodigy, right? Wrong. Let me introduce a British fellow by the name of Paul Norris.

Paul is regarded as an authority when it comes to creative bending. His site Circuitbenders is a huge source for information for anyone who is not afraid to play Dr Frankenstein with their old gear. Interesting to see, is that the collection of gear used for this library stretches far beyond the usual plastic pianos and Speak and Spell units. The equipment that have been violated is: Alesis SR16, Frontline percussion synth, Korg DDD5, Korg MR16, Mattel Synsonics, Roland TR727, Yamaha DD6, Casio SA1, SK60 & SK200 samplers, Fraktal Noise Synth, Korg Poly 800, Purple Keys (unbranded) and Yamaha VSS200. The toys section is made up by sounds from Beats Toy, ELC, Matchbox Talking Teacher, Mighty Borg Teddy Bear, Texas Instruments Speak & Spell and VTech Talking Computer.

Extensive is the word.

As the contents is quite far from the ordinary sample library, breaking down the library into the usual numbers is of little sense. But essentially there are:

Size: 631.9 megabyte.

Rex loops: 303

Wav Loops: 303

Single sounds: 282

Playable sampler patches: 25.

By its very nature, circuit bent sounds are born from a deep fascination of electronics. While this is cool and all, I sometimes feel that the producers lose their objectivity in favor of their skills of technical innovation. I remember in technical school when me and my insanely hip pals were drawing up new forms of fantastic ways of synthesis - just to realize that theory and real life are two very different things.

How do you keep your head cool and don't get carried away marveling at your own genius? I spoke with Paul Norris about this and his approach is basically to do his stuff, record it and then try to find the interesting moments.

In order to come up with innovative material (in any area, really) you have to have some headroom, and Paul Norris have allowed himself quite some headroom which have resulted in a quite broad palette of sounds. The library spans from the glitchy, stuttering noises we are used to hear circuit bent sounds, odd bleeps, short effect sounds, messed up tones and riffs from toys to "almost normal" basslines that easily could fit in an acid house track.

In Pauls own words,

"Producing a circuitbent sample pack is often just a matter of quality control. You can record hours of audio from circuitbent kit and a lot will be unusable rubbish, but every now and then you'll get a 'WTF was that!' moment when a completely alien sound or loop will jump out of nowhere.

Obviously it's pointless producing a pack of sounds that are so completely insane that nobody could use them but - who am I to judge what is usable and musical, and what isn't? I'd rather make sounds that are actually interesting in and of themselves, and then let the user decide what they want to do with them.

This seems a much more open ended way of creating sample packs, than a huge bank of predictable noises that are rooted in one genre and don't give you many options on what you can actually do with them. I think the problem with a lot of 'experimental' sample packs is that they are full of samples that sound fantastic in that collection, but you end up struggling to force them into a track before realising that they are only going to sound good in the context of that sample pack. I would rather create a selection of sounds that can actually be integrated seamlessly with other mixes and genres, as well as standing alone as an experimental collection in their own right."

Although that Paul works in an area where the line between noise and musicality, and innovation and insanity is indeed fuzzy, it's difficult not to agree with him. Initially I felt a little let down by the library as I felt it contained More of The Same Old Thing. When I heard the news about a follow up to one of the better ciruit bent libraries there is, my hopes where high it would explore the whole circuit bending from a new perspective - take it to the next level (what ever that might be). But after discussing the matter with Paul I must say I'm happy he didn't. The sounds are not drenched in syrup of endless delays, distortion, trance-gates or anything else. This is Pauls donation of deep frozen moments of electronic insanity - it's clinically dry, and it's all up to you where you should take it.

Fair enough.

Although my personal feeling about circuit bend sounds, is that I am a little bored of the same old stuttering, there are quite a few moments when it grabbed my entire Yes Yes Yes!-attention. The sounds from the Mighty Borg Teddy Bear are for example extremely cool. The loops (unfortunately just five of them) sounds like a bipolar drummer with Parkinsons having a blast with an industrial cutting machine. The single sounds are mainly an impact type of effects with a nasty distortion quality to them. Add a pumping reverb or a delay and you can bring in some serious wicked attitude to your tunes. If you are a sucker for effects - you'll whole-heartedly enjoy the material here. The loops from the Alesis SR16 drum machine are also absolutely excellent and have a disturbing industrial quality to them, and if I should say something really negative about this library is that these sounds aren't available as single samples.

To put it straight. When it comes to circuit bent libraries, most of the stuff I've heard is made by people who are high on their own geniality, which is as tiring as people doing cocaine. "Look! I've banged two five-inch nails through my Casio Electro-Jack and it's says 'Fzzz!'. Slam some delay on it, some hot sauce and man... it rocks!"

"Fzzz!".

Yum yum.

Conclusion

From this perspective Circuit Bent Sounds Volume 2 is very much the real deal. It's not a crowd-pleaser. It provides you with the meat, but you have to add the sauce and the fries. It is an additional toolbox to pull out when you feel that you have been working with too normal stuff for too long. With Loopmasters Circuit Bent Sounds Volume 2, Paul Norris shows his skill as a masterbender - it's executed in the best possible of ways. Even if circuit bent sounds might no longer tingle your imagination, there are lots of very usable effects, vocal samples and weird riffs in this library that more than enough makes up for the price.

If you want to see the next chapter of circuit bending, that's up to you, but Paul Norris and Loopmasters have captured some quite original electronic meltdowns and although I haven't tried it myself, something tells me that the combination of this library and Native Instruments Absynth can be a seriously dangerous combination. I can't wait until Native Instruments send me my copy of Absynth 5.