Review: Hybrid Fluids Pulses Anthology by The Last Haven

by AMM

Quickly and easily add layers
Effects are on keyswitches for fast textural changes
Menu filters layers by type
Each layer can be adjusted for volume, panning and tone individually
Tempo is tied to the DAW

Lack of labels

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Review: Hybrid Fluids Pulses Anthology by The Last Haven

Hybrid Fluids: Pulses Anthology is a speedy and colorful pulse builder from The Last Haven. Fluidity is the central aspect of its design, as it easily adds or removes layers, changes effects, or randomizes the settings, all without missing a beat.

Hybrid Fluids: Pulses Anthology is available for $139 from The Last Haven

Thoughts

Pulses Anthology is designed to be intuitive: you need to press buttons to figure out what they do, and the temptation mounts to press all the buttons. This library is comprised of some excellent sounding layers, which can be added in force and manipulated individually for volume, panning, and tone. The layers are displayed as cells on a grid and there are 8 panels to the grid, with one displayed at a time. You can select or deselect cells by clicking on them, and can shift to a new panel by clicking on the left or right arrows, all while the instrument is playing. In addition to combining and recombining layers manually, there is also a random button, which will select several layers for you.

There are four menu filters in the bottom left, which will highlight for you which cells fit that category. This is very helpful when you are looking for a particular type of sound and helps you build layers more deliberately. Each layer can be controlled individually for volume, panning tone and tuning.

One of the neatest features of this library is its effects engine, a new design called the Flex Engine. The Flex Engine contains a step-sequencer, compressor, filters, destructor, delay and convolution. What makes this notable is that each effect is tied to a keyswitch, meaning you can quickly add or remove the effect while the instrument is playing and without having to open the full menu. The Flex Engine has a randomizer within each component, and I found this feature is especially interesting with the Gate and Destructor.

One drawback I found is that the lack of labeling in this interface makes it challenging to recreate a sound you had previously. Not only are the layers not labeled, but they can be recombined in a seemingly infinite number of ways, so if you have a sound you really like, save the instrument in Kontakt.

Overall I found this library very well designed for its purposes. It has a fluid design to continually combine and recombine elements into interesting and evolving textures. It lends itself particularly well to building tension in a hybrid scoring context such as action and psychological thriller.