New Virtual Instrument Makes Squealing Noises Of Machinery In Pain

US Hollow Sun Intros Broken 22/04/11

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Hollow Sun has introduced Broken - a new virtual instrument inspired by knackered gear.

Here's what they have to say about it:

Imagine you've just moved into an old house, you've settled in, got your stuff unpacked and you decide to have a rummage around the attic to clear out some of the junk left behind by the previous occupants. In the process of doing this, you stumble across a curious looking box of electronics. Intrigued, you dust it off, observe the slight stains of verdigree on the chipped hardboard fascia, you smile at the badly applied Dymo tape labelling and take it downstairs for closer examination. It all looks very promising - obviously very badly made by someone with few construction skills and who ran out of matching knob caps but it seems to be some kind of home-made synthesiser.

With eager anticipation, you fire it up only to be greeted by chaotic, squealing, stuttering noises of machinery in pain. It's broken and doesn't work properly ... it probably never did!

The filter seems to be fine as does everything else but the oscillator is (to use a technical term) totally f'cked... and it sounds totally fabulous!!

And so is Broken styled.

Courtesy of our interstellar friend, Atomic Shadow, it is based around samples of a very badly malfunctioning Hammond Solovox close to death. These are mapped out across the keyboard with a different sample for every key. But these weird, organic and engaging noises are just the start and they can be transformed using the low/high pass filter, envelope generator, multi-wave LFO, bit cruncher, distortion, phase shifter, echo unit and convolved spring and acoustic reverb to create uniquely tortured sounds and textures.

In keeping with the nature of the beast, there are no presets - this is a knob twiddling experimenter's dream.

Making a Broken virtual synth is actually a pretty clever idea. Maybe it's time to clear the unpredictable, broken old gear out of the studio and replace it with virtual unpredictable, broken gear.

Pricing and Availability

Hollow Sun Broken is available now for US $8.

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