Refractor Audio transport us to new sonic worlds
A new virtual instrument for Kontakt by Klayton (Celldweller)
Refractor Audio Transport Hold · Source: refractoraudio.com
Refractor Audio Transport Pitch · Source: refractoraudio.com
Refractor Audio Transport Cutoff · Source: refractoraudio.com
Refractor Audio Transport Delay · Source: refractoraudio.com
Refractor Audio Transport Volume · Source: refractoraudio.com
The bi-monikered Klayton a.k.a. Celldweller, maker of heavy electronic music for film, TV and general enjoyment has produced his first virtual instrument. It’s powered by the familiar Kontakt platform and features 2000 personally curated samples. He’s calling it TRANSPORT and it’s designed to find new ways to smash these samples together to find some interesting sounds.
Transport to another probability
It’s very much sample and loop orientated. Rather than creating instrument sounds this is more like the mashing and fiddling with loops to generate pulsing landscapes and rhythmic happenings. What Klayton/Celldweller has tried to do differently is the way two or more loops interact with each other. The key is something called the Probability Engine which selects different slices from the loops being triggered. So rather than playing all the loops together it chooses which loop is playing which slice and at which time. It sounds a lot like the Loopmash in Steinberg’s Cubase. It can move from straight forward linear mashing through to completely random noise creation.
It’s all in the modulation
Aside from the Probability Engine you also have a lot of step sequence based modulation options. The GUI displays these rather nicely as planets. There are worlds of volume, delay-send, cutoff, pitch and hold. Each biosphere has an independent 16 step sequencer in order to mess the samples about. Other features include keyswitch pitch shifting, a slice repeater and stepper and a velocity sensitivity toggle.
Klayton/Celldweller is the source
All the samples come from Klay-weller messing about in his wonderfully bedazzling studio of beeping, flashing, boxes that go “bing”. He has a lot of gear and the resulting samples are heavily manipulated, processed and dripping with warmth. Which raises the question that if you have so much awesome gear to play with when do you find the time to do your hair?
Klayton/Celldweller Studio · Source: refractoraudio.com
Sample CD evolution
Klayt-dweller has produced sample CD’s before but this is the first time he’s put them into a virtual instrument. It’s an interesting trend that allows a sample producer to add further creative dimensions to their sounds. This is not a bad attempt at doing something interesting. If you register the product you also get access to all the original samples inside Transport, so you get the best of both worlds.
There’s some great testimonials from his mates in the business on the website that are worth reading. And there’s an in-depth walkthrough video where you don’t get to hear any sound examples until 6 minutes in. 6 minutes of Cell-ton enthusing about the mechanics of it all. It’s great to get that kind of look behind an instrument and hear it opened up and described with obvious passion.
Transport is available now for Kontakt 5 and Kontakt 5 Player for $199.
More information on the Refractor Audio Transport product page.
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