MATERIALS is an instrument that explores an extended vocabulary of percussion and the unexpected gestures within it. Performed by Grammy-nominated percussionist Eli Keszler and recorded at the iconic Power Station studio in New York, it lives between the texture of matter and energy of performance.
MATERIALS
£249
£179
COLLAGE BUNDLE
£747
£449
/
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PERCUSSION AS RAW MATTER
Across 1,708 phrases, 45 multisample instruments, 35 oneshot instruments and 273 sound design presets, MATERIALS suspends percussion at every stage of impact and decay.
The friction around a hit, the energy of a gesture and its lingering resonance are all captured in hyper-detail. A tape-splicing-inspired engine then lets you tear apart and rearrange every sample.
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THE TEXTURED AND THE PHYSICAL
MATERIALS treats percussion not as a set of instruments but as a palette of raw material to strike, bow, rub and fumble.
A massive array of extended percussion was recorded for the sessions: two separate drum kits, a grand piano and a large concert drum stood alongside Thai gongs, tam-tams and 39-inch gongs. Around them were crotales, sizzle cymbals, gamelan strips, esoteric bells, a Hang, Engelhart metal percussion and a rare handmade Garrapata, along with Eli’s own eclectic collection of shakers and beads.
These raw materials were explored with mallets, brushes, sticks, bundles and superballs, with bows and bare hands, setting one against another: beads on metal, superballs on gongs, an EBow on piano strings. Single hits grew into rolls, fills and looping patterns, and those into long gestures, each a micro-performance in itself.
The sessions encompassed everything from improvised performances and gestures, through to loops and patterns, and then to detailed multisample collections. All of it captured through Power Station’s collection of vintage microphones and its Neve 8088 console. The entire library is also available as WAV files outside the engine, ready to be dragged into a DAW, along with 298 tempo-synced loops for rhythmic work.
GESTURES OF INTENTION
Eli Keszler is a percussion virtuoso whose music is built from texture, dynamics and mechanical detail.
Known for his intricate and unpredictable performance style across records, installations, soundtracks and collaborations with artists such as Oneohtrix Point Never, Laurel Halo and Skrillex, he has developed a body of work that draws rhythm and harmony out of material rather than imposing them onto it.
→ ELI KESZLER
A ROOM OF RESONANCE
Power Station’s Studio A is one of the great recording spaces of New York, with a uniquely sensitive acoustic that has drawn artists from David Bowie to Big Thief.
Its thirty-five-foot pine ceiling puts the architecture of the room inside every recording. Recorded and engineered by Keszler's longtime collaborator Nolan Thies, MATERIALS offers four signals that move from inside the room to well outside it: a close capture right at the instrument, a far perspective carrying the air of the live room, an AKG BX20 spring reverb that lets each hit ring on, and Thies’s own processing chain of tape echo, analogue reverb, distortion and compression.
SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
Recording, playback, processing and performance meld together to give MATERIALS its voice.
Our 273 sound design presets cover its range, from bombastic gestures of clattering cymbals to distended cycles of pattering bells and stretched piano. Alongside the presets are a collection of multisample articulations: 45 instruments that stay true to the clarity of the acoustic recordings, ready to be pulled apart.
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CHAOS AND ORDER
Inspired by the tape-splicing techniques of musique concrète, MATERIALS’ engine turns every recording into a set of fragments to be cut and re-ordered.
COLLAGE
MIXER
CONVOLUTION
EFFECTS
MODULATION
Up to five loops can be placed on each layer, set as coloured points dragged across the waveform to find the exact grain of a sound. Each loop has its own pitch, envelope, filtering and playback direction, and the set can be sequenced or randomised into patterns that keep evolving.
THE COLLAGE LIBRARIES
MATERIALS joins two of our previous instruments built on the same engine.
The COLLAGE BUNDLE includes all three. SPECTRES gathers fifteen experimental instrumentalists into a study of sonic illusion; RUINS takes the electric guitar apart through six players; MATERIALS turns on percussion, through the practice of a single avant-garde performer.
SOFTWARE
Kontakt Player, Kontakt 7.10.9 (or higher)
Free Kontakt Player included
SYSTEM
Intel Macs (i5 or higher): macOS 12 or later; Apple Silicon Macs: macOS 12 or later (latest update); Windows 10 or 11, Intel Core i5 or equivalent CPU
SIZE
64GB samples
CONTENT
1,708 phrase articulations
45 multisample instruments
35 oneshot instruments
298 audio loops
273 sound design presets
21,640 raw .WAV files
3 engine instruments
4 mic perspectives
