Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.5/5 Stars
Heavyocity expand their hybrid cinematic range with a 9.42GB set of pads, plucks, keys, leads, basses, rhythmic pedals, arpeggios and cue creators. The library is constructed from analogue sources, including vintage string machines (ARP Solina, Crumar Performer, Roland RS‑101 and RS‑202), classic polyphonic synths (Roland Juno‑2, Novation Supernova) and more modern instruments (Waldorf Streichfett, Studio Electronics Boomstar 5089, Moog Sub 37, Arturia MatrixBrute). These gems of yesteryear have been dragged screaming into the present by Heavyocity’s signature transformative processing.
Housed in the Gravity 2 sound engine (see my SOS March 2024 review), Convergence contains 252 single‑source waveforms and 227 three‑channel presets. Its creative nerve‑centre is the powerful Macro control system, which generates rhythmic and evolving textures while displaying a splendid array of rotating wheels and animated coloured lights resembling a fairground at night.
The 26 ‘cue creators’ presets combine three sources. ‘Ancient Seas’ places two sawtooth bass drones below an evolving formant waveform, while ‘Converging Missions’ creates hybrid orchestral drama and irresistible rhythmic momentum by floating a euphoric‑sounding pad above a syncopated Moog‑like bass pattern. Ticking the horror/fantasy/sci‑fi boxes, ‘I Know What You Did’ is a montage of eerie descending pitch glides and unstable, slow‑building muted braams, and the monumental bass tones and unpitched noise textures of ‘Close The Airlock’ evoke the terrors of outer space.
Convergence’s 53 rhythmic pedals show off Heavyocity’s programming chops. The upbeat ‘Anticipations’ provides instant forward motion, ‘Berlinematics’ delivers a steaming slice of Euro Disco and the lightly funky, repeated‑chord accents of ‘Sixteenths Everywhere’ are a subtle delight. Other pedals introduce intermittent pitch swoops, voicebox interjections and in the case of ‘Mod The Rings’, mad, unpredictable atonal pitches which burst in at regular intervals.
In the Arps department, ‘Amazing Multichroma’ is an astonishing amalgam of a steady eighth‑note pattern, a gated rhythm pulse and a high‑pitched feedback‑like tone. ‘Cascading Arping’ layers different arpeggio styles to great hypnotic effect, and the magical chimes of ‘Floating Organ Bells’ reminded me of Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air.
Moving on to the pads and leads, I liked the sweeping, star‑struck majesty of ‘Astronomy Night’ and the orchestral scale of ‘Shiny Objects’. Though ‘Big Fuzzy Pad’ is somewhat more forceful, the emphasis here is on ethereal and uncanny timbres. The leads have a distinctly vintage flavour, with ‘Rising Walls’ bringing to mind Gary Numan’s Minimoog sound. If you want Prodigy‑style belligerence, some of the 16 bass presets constitute a health hazard — ‘Atomically Unstable’ should really be banned under the Dangerous Drones Act.
Though not as explosively aggressive as some of Heavyocity’s collections, Convergence's dark intensity creeps up on you.
Overall, I felt there’s an over‑reliance on pitch detuning in order to create an eerie atmosphere, but fortunately it’s easy to deactivate this effect if it becomes irritating. Convergence covers a lot of ground, and though not as explosively aggressive as some of Heavyocity’s collections, its dark intensity creeps up on you.