Spitfire Audio Albion Tundra

At the Edge of Silence

Capturing a characteristically Scandinavian sound, Spitfire sampled a 100-piece orchestra playing never-before-sampled techniques, at the very edge of silence.

Alongside the huge range of orchestral content are bellows, percussion and a characterful warped synth section - everything you need to take it down a degree or two.

Features

Tundra Orchestra

• A 100-piece orchestra recorded to tape at Air Studios, London
• 133 multi dynamic orchestral articulations split across Strings, Brass and Woodwinds ensembles
• 38 violins with 32 articulations including 19 longs, 11 shorts and 2 legatos
• 12 Celli and 6 Basses with 30 articulations including 17 longs, 11 shorts and 2 legatos
• Brass ensembles with 17 unique articulations for both Mid and Low ensembles
• Woodwind ensembles with 18 unique articulations for both High and Mid Ensembles
• Legatos designed by Andrew Blaney
• Multi-mic control with Close, Tree, Outrigger and Ambients
• Recorded using priceless valve and ribbon mics
• Neve Monserrat preamps into a Neve 88R desk
• Recorded digitally at 96k via 2" Studer tape

The "Vral" Grid

• 32 hand-crafted slowly evolving drones, with varying loop points
• All housed within the Evo Grid engine, for almost limitless randomization

Stephenson's Steam Band

• 138 Stephenson Pads housed in the eDNA interface
• Organic sounds created from the orchestral material
• 198 original sounds to create more content from

Brunel Loops

• 22 unique instruments with 52 presets
• All played in triplets, 12ths, 8th and 16ths, tempo-synced to your DAW
• Played by the infamous Paul Clarvis

Darwin Percussion

• 20 percussive elements
• Single patch for easy playability

Icy Strings

Creating something extraordinary often involves taking a leap into the unknown.

Spitfire knew they wanted the strings to have a 'frozen' sheen to them, and to achieve this they needed to scoop some of the lower mids out of the frequency map.

To do this they made the bold decision to exclude violas from the orchestra, replacing them with rich celli and basses - 12 Celli and & 6 Basses sat in the middle of the room, with two massively enhanced violin sections of 20 and 18 players sat in antiphon (opposite sides of the room).

Tundra gives you a huge selection of articulations ranging from classics such as the ever popular flautando, but with mutes added, and sections playing poly-divisi, so that even with a band of this size, every player can be heard.

Spitfire also explored unorthodox approaches - from requesting that players attend the session with practise bows with no rosin on the hair for minimum traction, to bowing the strings with the back of the bow.

Resident AIR Studios engineer Jake Jackson's real challenge, with the roof fully elevated so that the signal contains as much early reflection as possible, was trying to get the musicians louder than the ambient room tone.

The strings were recorded in two sections, high and low, with matching articulations where possible.

Highlights alongside these cascading longs articulations are flautando legatos, brushed shorts, and some extraordinary loose pizzicatos.

Whispering Choruses

When it came to Woodwinds and Brass, Spitfire recorded four different bands (high winds, mid winds, mid brass, low brass), approaching the sampling process with a choral mode in mind.

The instructions to all bands were that they wanted it to sound raw, honest and non-Conservatoire, but with very specific textural approaches that liven the hall, to create a very natural, mossy texture.

The entire Tundra Orchestra played from quiet markings all the way down to silent oblivion, resulting in a deeply dynamic and timbral set of expressive instruments that quite happily act as a standalone orchestral toolkit, albeit with a unique quality.

In what is always a fascinating creative process, Spitfire set about accompanying the Tundra band with a selection of Harmoniums and Shruti Boxes (bellowed single-chord Indian drone makers).

But it didn't quite match up to the Tundra magic, so it was abandoned.

Well, everything save a throw away portion of the recordings where Christian had requested for the players to perform on the knife edge between the bellow hissing, and the reeds actually sounding.

This produced an extraordinary selection of stuttering granular folk beds which we have slammed through processing and have warped into a very special Nordic style Evo Grid.

With 32 evolutions spread over 12 regions, and the all important dice function to immediately randomize your preset into a near infinite number of possible outcomes.

Following on from the hugely successful warped orchestral content in Albions I and III, Spitfire decided to approach this set differently.

Instead of using the 'in-the-box' pristine set of digital processing and mangling tools, they decided to go wholly out-of-the-box, employing whirring Roland Space Chorus Echoes with classic Eventides and Axe FX Pros into the mangle chain.

The brief: imagine you had put together a studio made entirely from an abandoned 1960s American early warning system.

Not only does this collection feature orchestral material, but also the aforementioned Harmoniums and Shruti boxes which offer up a particularly unique, Northern feel.

The end result of this component is as inspiring and earthy as the rest of the library, presented in the ever popular eDNA engine enabling you to instantly make these presets your own.

Never to shy away from epic, they also felt it would be important to create some brooding epic drum combos, designed for intermittent use, to mark time or punctuate.

Think Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten by Arvo Pärt.

Featuring unique combinations of very small drums played against massive Verdi bass drums and taikos, these drums speak of distant pagan rituals.