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Punch ERM - WAV/REFILL - 4 Stars
Saul Stokes designs and builds his own synthesizers. Or at least he tries to. By his own admission, his engineering skills are less than perfect — the inner workings of some of his creations having shocked more conventionally minded engineers. But nevertheless they work — in the sense that they produce sound and they haven't burnt his house down yet!
To be fair, the irregular construction of these machines is the very thing that makes them interesting. These hybrid synthesizers, containing circuitry from Moogs, TB303s and even EMS VCS3s (not to mention whatever else Stokes has seen fit to include), are capable of producing unique mutant sounds. Indeed, Stokes has based a successful career in ambient electronica on the sounds generated by his homemade instruments; building rich sonic landscapes and textures, but also using them as the source for all of his percussive sounds. Over the years he has built up quite a collection, sampling them onto an Akai MPC2000 for use in his compositions and live performances.
This archive forms the basis of the Punch ERM (Expansive Rhythm Module) CD. Comprising 400 of these home-brew electro percussion sounds, the collection is available in either Refill or WAV format and takes up 33MB on one disc. The library is divided into five rather tenuously titled sections — Kicks, Snares, Hi hats, Percussion and Effects. Emulation is certainly not the name of the game here, and there are obviously inherent problems in categorising a collection like this with traditional drum and percussive labels. A great number of the sounds don't even fit into the frequency bands you might expect, let alone sound anything like the instruments they've been catalogued under. Some of the 'snares' for example, would do equally well in the Kicks section. But this is a minor gripe, and I suspect that the only realistic alternative would be to use labels like Clicks and Squelches, which probably wouldn't be too helpful either! While I'm on the subject, I feel I should also mention that the Effects section is just a convenient container for all those weird noises that don't fit into normal percussive envelopes. Not that this is by any means a bad thing, and when I say weird, I mean 'Aphex Twin on brown acid' weird!
The sounds themselves are amazingly varied, ranging from harsh metallic drum hits and bass drums, so crunchy they might have been sampled at four-bit resolution, to light atmospheric noises and 'hi hats' which sound like a glass being tapped, high-pass filtered and time-stretched. Some use of delay and reverb is evident, and the great thing about such abstract material as this is that realism is not an issue, so if a sound is too dominant there's nothing to stop you from processing it further until it sounds exactly like you want it to. By this way of thinking, Punch ERM could be a source for a good deal more sounds than it currently contains.
Whilst this collection is undoubtedly aimed at the electronica crowd, it might be interesting to other electronic and dance musicians who want to get a bit more experimental. And if you happen to find yourself doing the sound effects for a sci-fi movie, it would be ideal! The other reason you might want to own this CD, is that you probably wouldn't have thought of half of the noises on it yourself, let alone taken the time to build your own synths to create them. David Glasper
Rating:  [0 of 5 Stars!] |
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