Mode Audio has introduced Flood – ambient drones and samples, a 1.88Gb collection of an immense, hallucinogenic blend of pulverising bass, shimmering SFX, crackling sonic atmosphere and lilting analog synth haze. This selection of fraying noise textures, rumbling resonance and glitch-oriented SFX is nothing short of a dazzling feast of inventive sound design, making this one of Mode Audio’s widest-ranging and multi-faceted ambient releases to date.
It is available in Wav format from Mode Audio (£20 regular price).
This sample pack contains 189 files in six different folders, namely ‘Atmospheres’, ‘Basses’, ‘Drones’, ‘SFX’, ‘Textures’ and ‘Drones’ folders. Many of the atmospheres, textures and drones are long samples, in the region of 1 – 2 minutes.
‘Atmospheres’ contains a wide range of atmospheric sounds from wind chime, dusty analog string / synth to mechanical / industrial. They have a subtle movement and some have an edgy or haunting quality.
‘Basses’ contains a range of gnarly, rumbling and rhythmic bass sounds.
‘Drones’ contains a range of pad, string, keys and synth drones. These are typically long samples with a slightly saturated sound and a subtle movement.
‘SFX’ contains a range of impact, metallic, robotic and electrical type sounds that are ideal for creating rhythmic or contrasting elements.
‘Subs’ contains a range of rumbling and rattly sub-basses that add interesting movement and rhythmic elements.
‘Textures’ contains a range of metallic, impact, rattly, mechanical type sounds that have an edgy feel, adding rhythmic and contrasting elements.
Verdict
What I love about Flood is that it is so versatile. The sounds are brilliantly atmospheric and well suited to not only ambient sounds but also a wider range such as downtempo and soundscapes. There’s a bit of everything from analog lofi, glitchy, noisy to brooding textures.
The samples layer excellently together and allow you to create rhythmic or looping patterns as well as evolving soundscapes and furthermore are ideally suited to further processing in samplers or with effects.
I’ve created the five track EP ‘deluge’ embedded at the beginning of the post to highlight the sort of sounds that you can produce with the pack. I’ve used a number of effects including Fracture XT and Subvert (Glitchmachines), Shaperbox 2 (Cableguys) as well as various reverbs – SP2016 and Blackhole (Eventide) and delays – DDLY (iZotope), Incipit (Inear Display) and H949 Dual Harmoniser (Eventide).
All tracks arranged, produced and mastered in MuLab 8 using Saturn 2, Pro-Q 3 and Pro-L 2 (Fabfilter) and Stage (Fiedler Audio).
