Slate + Ash has launched MATERIALS, an instrument library and sound-design engine based on extended percussion recordings. The collection features performances by percussionist Eli Keszler, recorded at Power Station Studio A in New York and engineered by Nolan Thies.
MATERIALS contains 1,708 phrases, 45 multisample instruments, 35 one-shot instruments and 273 sound-design presets. Its recordings cover percussion at different stages of attack, sustain and decay, including individual hits, rolls, fills, looping patterns and longer performed gestures.
The source recordings include two drum kits, a grand piano, a concert drum, Thai gongs, tam-tams, 39-inch gongs, crotales, sizzle cymbals, gamelan strips, bells, a Hang, Engelhart metal percussion, a handmade Garrapata, and collections of shakers and beads. The instruments were played with mallets, brushes, sticks, bundles, superballs, bows and bare hands, including combinations such as beads on metal, superballs on gongs and an EBow on piano strings.
Slate + Ash describes MATERIALS as treating percussion as source material for striking, bowing, rubbing and other physical gestures. The library is intended to provide acoustic percussion articulations alongside processed and rearranged material for music production, sound design and rhythmic work.
The recordings provide four signal perspectives: a close microphone capture, a more distant room recording, an AKG BX20 spring reverb signal, and a processed chain created by Thies using tape echo, analogue reverb, distortion and compression. Power Station Studio A’s acoustic environment, including its 35-foot pine ceiling, is part of the recorded material.
The included engine is informed by tape-splicing methods associated with musique concrète. It divides recordings into fragments that can be cut, reordered and rearranged, combining sample playback, processing and performance controls. The 273 presets range across percussion-based gestures, bells, cymbals and piano material, while the multisample instruments retain the acoustic recordings as separate articulations.
The full audio library is also supplied as WAV files for use outside the instrument engine. It includes 298 tempo-synchronised loops that can be dragged into a DAW.
MATERIALS is available for $249, with an introductory price of $179. It is also included in the Collage Bundle with Spectres and Ruins, priced at $747 regularly and $449 during the current discounted offer.
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