Electronic Sound May 2015 (Regular Edition) | Page 46

TECH DAVID FANSHAWE: EARTH ENCOUNTERS VOLUME 1 SPITFIRE AUDIO A great sample library of field recordings from the archives of ethnomusicologist DAVID FANSHAWE Words: LUKE SANGER UK sampling connoisseurs Spitfire Audio have been knocking it out of the park recently. You might have seen me getting all excited over the new Hans Zimmer percussion library in the last issue of Electronic Sound, so you can imagine my glee when their latest product dropped into my inbox. ‘Earth Encounters Volume 1’ is a collection of field recordings taken from the extensive sound archives of British composer and ethnomusicologist David Fanshawe, who died in 2010 at the age of 68. As a keen field recordist myself, I was chomping at the bit to get this loaded up. ‘Earth Encounters’ is in Spitfire’s Signature range, so once installed it appears proudly among the list of products in your Kontakt library (and if you don’t own Kontakt, you can use the free Kontakt 5 player from Native Instruments). The samples are arranged into four main categories – atmos, edna, loops and single hits. These are then further split down into folders named after the geographical location of the recordings, which illustrate how far Fanshawe travelled to capture such a wide range of languages, instruments and music, many of the languages having since become extinct. The sounds themselves are really something special. In fact, this is one of the most unique sample libraries I have ever used. It’s actually a great privilege to be able to access such beautifully recorded sounds so easily and have the freedom to manipulate them with looping, pitching, time stretching and so on. The samples range from subtle percussive loops that could add an interesting layer to a composition, to rich location recordings that deserve to be listened to as musical pieces in their own right. My only minor gripe with this product is the bizarre decision to use two different interfaces for some of the library. The “standard” view, used for the majority of sounds, is lovely and complements the overall feel of the pack, which includes a picture of Fanshawe himself. Then, strangely, Spitfire have chosen a totally different interface for some of the other sounds. Yes, it provides more manipulation options over the samples, but visually it’s a really ugly red and black that’s reminiscent of Winamp skins from the Windows XP days and it seems quite out of place alongside the other view. That shouldn’t distract from what is a fantastic, intriguing and unique collection of field recordings, though. There’s no doubt that it will inspire many current day producers to include these sounds in their own compositions and it might even encourage some of them to try out some field recording themselves. ‘Earth Encounters Volume 1’ RRP £199 (plus VAT) www.spitfireaudio.com