Bristol-based sound-design experts Slate + Ash have just launched a new sample library that brings together a selection of artists and producers known for their experimental guitar techniques. Available for Native Instruments Kontakt, RUINS features a complex playback engine that has been used to “bend, break and re-contextualise“ the core samples to create unique, experimental sounds.
All of the performances presented in RUINS were captured live before being ‘deconstructed’ by Slate + Ash’s engine, which uses a concoction of looping, granular manipulation and complex modulation to transform the original recordings. Each artist involved in the project submitted a collection of loops, textures and resonances, resulting in a sonic palette which the company say falls outside of genre or categorisation.
Collaborators
Each of the artists involved in the project were chosen for their ability to push the guitar outside of traditional musical roles, treating it “less like an instrument, and more like an interface for texture, gesture and sonic ritual. Here’s what the company have to say about their contributions:
Stephen O’Malley
Founding member of Sunn O))), Khanate, and Burning Witch, O’Malley is known for carving monumental drone-metal sound from minimal gesture. His contributions to RUINS are gravitational: sustained low-end tones that buckle under their own weight, harmonics that emerge like tectonic shifts. His recordings feel less like performances and more like monolithic structures being slowly eroded by time.
David Torn
A pioneer of textural guitar, Torn’s work spans ECM releases, film scores, and collaborations with David Bowie and Tim Berne. In RUINS, Torn’s signature looping and feedback chaos is rendered almost skeletal — fragments that twitch and echo, oscillating between improvisation and entropy. His gestures, though fractured, retain an unmistakable lyrical pull.
Bill Horist
With a practice rooted in extended techniques and real-time preparation, Horist transforms the guitar into a kinetic sculpture. His sessions for RUINS are rich in percussive resonance: strings bowed, struck, scraped and detuned, yielding unstable rhythmic patterns and chaotic overtones. The result is a visceral vocabulary of texture — raw, physical, and always in motion.
Oren Ambarchi
A mainstay of the Touch and Drag City labels, Ambarchi’s minimalist guitar work explores the edges of silence, amplification and form. His contributions to RUINS are studies in restraint — gestures stretched into expansive soundscapes, oscillating between presence and absence. Ambarchi’s tones aren’t played so much as unveiled, unfolding slowly within space.
Ben Greenberg + Arjan Miranda
Co-founders of Circular Ruin Studios, Greenberg (Uniform, The Men) and Miranda (Black Mountain) bring a background in noise, folk resonance and modular experimentation. Their sessions fuse brutal distortion with melodic collapse — pulses of repetition that flicker between composition and circuitry. Greenberg’s textural aggression is balanced by Miranda’s harmonic sensitivity, forming some of the most rhythmically unstable moments in the collection.
Compatibility
RUINS runs in Native Instruments Kontakt 8, which is supported on PCs running Windows 10 or above, and Macs running macOS 12 and higher. VST3, AU and AAX plug-in versions are available, along with a standalone application.
Pricing & Availability
RUINS is available now, and is currently (6 August 2025) being offered at an introductory price of £179, reduced from its full cost of £249. Prices include VAT.
