Music-making community tools-maker The Crow Hill Company is proud to announce availability of VENOM — closely collaborating with Los Angeles, CA, USA-based self-styled Death beats recording artist and sample pack producer Snakes Of Russia (a.k.a. Joseph Holiday) who took techniques honed over decades to present a biting beats and breaks drum library like no other, one which allows users to create drum parts tailored to their music without the need for loops or pre-performed rhythms — as of March 26…
Readily referencing its latest release, The Crow Hill Company collectively states that VENOM represents The first time us composers here at ‘The Hill’ have used a drum library that makes us sound like badass programmers in an instant, adding: Snakes… has taken techniques honed over decades to present a toolkit like no other so you can create drum parts tailored to your music without the need for loops or pre-performed rhythms. The environment we have designed is a meeting of minds who agree that creativity shouldn’t be stifled or stymied by prescription.
Put it this way: unlike many sample-based libraries, VENOM does not simply mix signals, add layers, and modulate signals — hence The Crow Hill Company equating this all-new way of working to ‘poisoning’. After all, each process applied will have an adverse effect on the ‘nervous system’ of beats, breaks, and rhythm parts created by the user. Ultimately, rhythms will appear to subdivide and multiply into different degrees of complexity due the pushing and pulling of different signals, chains, and paths.
It is not for nothing that the eye-catching main operational screen allows users to effectively choose their poison (read: alternative signal paths of their selected kit/bass running in parallel with the original sample set) — namely, DOLL’SEYES (crushed tape… using the damaged stuff to get the ‘tapey-ness’ out of tape, as it were); ARROW TREE (amplified… through some beasts at Seahorse Sound Studios, a full-service digital/analogue multi-space and multitrack recording studio located in downtown Los Angeles, CA, USA); WOLFSBANE (intimate space… real rooms duplicating the signal through early reflections, not just reverb); CORNCOCKLE (distant room… re-amped into the intimate space, but then mic’d from a distance for increased decay); SNAKEROOT (vintage plate… traditional reverberation via devices at Seahorse Sound Studios); SKYFLOWER (rusted spring… does what it says on the tin; try oxidising the signal with this poison).
And an equally striking set of macro controls allow access to a 24dB bi-directional filter, waveshape distortion control, overall compression, and volume envelope of the instrument in question. Eventually experimentation and exploration will take anyone’s music down a much darker road. Try toggling directly to the effects screen — itself divided into five distinct regions: REDUX (lo-fi bit-crusher), DIRT (bespoke waveshaping engine), (algorithmic) REVERB, (modelled) DELAY, and SMASH (master multi-band compressor to smash even the most polite of sounds) — for additional control over the biting beats and breaks drum library’s badass sound.
Speaking of which, who better to provide some illuminating insight into how VENOM ended up sounding (and looking) like nothing else than the talented individual who fully designed, created, processed, and annihilated it in the first place — namely, Joseph Holiday himself: For the recording of my last LP, I experimented with re-amping drums and synths through loudspeakers and bass and guitar cabinets with incredible results. There is just something special added by capturing an otherwise dry and direct signal through an amp, capturing the room. It imparts such character on the sound. So when …Crow Hill… approached me for this library, I knew I immediately wanted to explore this idea further.
For more information, visit thecrowhillcompany.com.
