Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars
Brackish Pads is an unusual instrument inasmuch as it takes the concept of lo‑fi pads to a subterranean level by exploring microtonality, stammering playback and dark‑sounding tones that are bent out of shape, all tempered by a healthy dose of unpredictability. It certainly sets a mood that can go from reflective to deeply dark and disturbing, so if you want to inject some sinister or unsettling emotion into your pad sounds you’ve come to the right place. Some of its more polite offerings might also slot into ambient music compositions, especially if you tweak the balance of the different patch elements.
Supporting all the mainstream plug‑in formats, Brackish Pads comes as a fully functioning instrument so does not rely on a third‑party host such as Kontakt. The full installation takes around 1.25GB.
The designers tell us that the idea for Brackish Pads came about when they were working on their Crystal Pads instrument, leading to a new approach to pad design that culminated in Brackish Pads. By exploiting unpredictable note modulations and microtonal shifts, Crow Hill’s designers set about expanding on the idea of including random‑sounding elements by adding a dedicated partial they termed ‘Critters’, about which more shortly. Brackish Pads features 16 sets of three sampled sounds, termed partials, that lean towards those scoring for picture, though there are also applications for perhaps less‑relaxing ambient and electronic music too. Importantly, all the creative tweaking is done using relatively few controls, and automating parameters can produce further tonal evolutions.
With its khaki‑coloured window (more than a little reminiscent of stagnant water), the instruments shows a keyboard along the bottom, a large dual‑concentric control on the left, three sliders and four further rotary controls. That large control looks after Expression plus low‑ and high‑pass filtering, and all controls can be automated. Coloured keys on the keyboard show the notes that activate four Pump Triggers, which have different envelopes, and which are linked to the compressor controlled by knob six. The effect is not tempo‑sync’ed — you just record one trigger key press every time you want a note to pump once. The lowest keyswitch brings in granular processing, which is nicely subtle and adds an endearing sparkle. Knobs three, four and five control Cassette, Delay and Splosh (a type of reverb), while the sliders numbered seven to nine handle Basic, Complex and Critters partial levels. Each partial fader has a transpose control beneath it with a range of ±12 semitones. Cassette adds the character of the pad being played back from a cassette tape that has spent too much time on the parcel shelf of the car on a sunny day. A preset select menu is used to select one of the 16 patches, which can then be modified to a significant degree using the controls. However, there seems to be no way to combine the partials from different patches.
While the first of the three partials is labelled Basic, that doesn’t mean clean and unruffled. Rather, it means that the weirdness is reasonably restrained. For example, taking the ‘Marsh Ghosts’ preset, the Basic partial sounds like a cross between grumbling cellos and a twin‑engine prop plane passing overhead, underpinned by the rumble of an underground train approaching the station. The Complex partial sounds distant and disturbing, almost like a watery choir in a large cave. For this preset the Critters partial is fairly deep and almost peaceful, swelling in slowly, getting brighter and then fading again, but in some of the other patches the Critters partial is the most dramatically fragmented, usually coming and going in an apparently inconsistent way. Put it all together and the ‘Marsh Ghosts’ patch conjures up a distant storm with a sense of impending doom. ‘Water Mocassins’ is a less scary patch than its name might imply, and by rebalancing the Partials it is possible to get some fabulous evolving pads that remain surprisingly well behaved.
If there’s a common element to all the patches it is that there’s usually a sense of unstable pitch‑wobble creating a disturbing undertow that sometimes hints at a badly maintained Mellotron and at others somebody warming their leftover curry using a lightsaber. In most cases there’s a good balance between musicality and instability, without the pitch fluctuations getting too excessive, though dialling in a lot of Cassette will give you excess when you need it. Adding the Splosh reverb makes more difference than you might imagine too, adding a degree of solidity to the sound.
Crow Hill have done a brilliant job both in sound design and in the straightforward control that Brackish Pads offers.
If you’re working on music for film or TV, this instrument is perfect for conjuring up a sense of unease or as a prelude to something dramatic happening. Think Blade Runner but all the replicants are on Prozac, or perhaps an impending visit from The Walking Dead. I can’t see many applications in mainstream pop, but for generating emotive cinematic soundscapes for picture, or for atmospheric music compositions, I think Crow Hill have done a brilliant job both in sound design and in the straightforward control that Brackish Pads offers. A real bargain at the price.