Sounds and Samples
>While some orchestral sample library producers focus on creating ever more realistic, playable or usable core instrument collections, others pursue less well-trodden paths. The prolific crew at Spitfire Audio seem to manage both, offering ever greater breadth and depth with each new release. Although not exclusively so, their products tend to be geared predominantly at those writing for TV, film or game soundtracks. However, as previously mentioned on these pages, many would find use in any production looking for a less obvious palette.
Besides spending time on the recording and playability of their sounds, Spitfire also put considerable effort into creating presets that employ the underlying samples in interesting ways. This again applies to the new Albion Solstice – the latest in their well-established Albion line. Like previous offerings, Solstice come as a series of Kontakt-based instruments with string sections at the core, but also covering percussion, pipes, choir, band and heavily processed electric and electronic sources. The specific remit of Albion Solstice is to conjure up a more earthy, folk-influenced sound – described by Spitfire both as a ‘celebration of un-notated traditions’ and ‘Modern Cinematic Folk Noir’.
The two string sections here are split into three subcategories – the Classic Octet, The Traditional Sextet, and The Elders Bass. Although some more straightforward orchestral territory is covered, the intent was to also capture articulations more appropriate to the collections’ folk bias. Further sections are created with The
Callers (Brass & Winds), The Mystics (Pipes) – essential to traditional Celtic music. This is pushed even further with The Blaggards, a selection of bandbased instruments including Celtic harps and hurdy-gurdy.
More modern textures are addressed by The Generator Trio, which employs electric guitars and bass to create drone and temposynced pulsing elements. This approach is also used in The Hosts, a 7-voice female choir. The Gut Circle deals with small scale traditional guitar tones (mostly tempo-synced performances).
Percussion is well represented in the form of The Nursery (light tuned percussion), and The Marauders (a collection of grooves and kits). Usefully, many of the elements can be routed and processed individually – though a lot of the power from Spitfire’s instruments comes from the fact that they usually require very little additional processing.
Things take another turn with The Cassette Orchestra, where recordings from Solstice Orchestra are heavily processed through tape machines and guitar pedals (and with synth-based sources thrown in for good measure). Finally, Drone Grid uses Spitfire’s ‘Evo Grid’ system for combining and mapping drone sources in interesting ways.
Like previous Albion offerings, there is a lot of content here (taking up over 73GB on disk) – and with much work put into making it as flexible and usable as possible. This is represented in its price. As discussed in previous reviews, I look forward to Spitfire embracing the larger GUI possibilities available in Kontakt 6, as their existing interfaces are small and somewhat cramped. However, as a one-stop modern scoring tool – or even a great source of new sounds – once again, Spitfire set the bar very high. spitfireaudio.com
VERDICT 9.5