Review: Nordsund Blood & Nordsund Gold for Zebra 2 by The Unfinished

by Raymond Ricker

Libraries provide a perfect complement to one another
The Bass Lines, the Loops and the Pads are expertly crafted
Makes use of the various types of filters to craft the overall sound
Extensive use of the X-Y Pads allows the composer to easily modify the sound

About the only knock I could give this is that my idea of a “lead” may differ from Matt’s. I thought that some of those, provided, could have been categorized as KEYS or PADS

The Unfinished has pretty much deconstructed the modular and gives us a unique and, dare I say, minimal approach to sound design. Just take a browse through his long list of influences which include John Carpenter, Cliff Martinez and Harry Gregson-Williams and you’ll get a pretty good idea what to expect. Everything from dark ambience, slow bass and percussive arpeggiations, and noir soundscapes.

Jump to the Videos of Nordsund Blood & Nordsund Gold for Zebra 2 by The Unfinished

Jump to the Demos of Nordsund Blood & Nordsund Gold for Zebra 2 by The Unfinished

Review: Nordsund Blood & Nordsund Gold for Zebra 2 by The Unfinished

Would it be going out on a limb to say Matt Bowdler designs sound libraries for the Zebra 2 synth better than anyone on the planet? Probably not. Amongst the slew of products on the market designed for Uh-e’s very popular synthesizer, many of which are focused on the EDM base of composing, The Unfinished has pretty much deconstructed the modular and gives us a unique and, dare I say, minimal approach to sound design. Just take a browse through his long list of influences which include John Carpenter, Cliff Martinez (noted for being the last drummer to record with Captain Beefheart) and Harry Gregson-Williams and you’ll get a pretty good idea what to expect. Everything from dark ambience, slow bass and percussive arpeggiations, and noir soundscapes. For those of you who have ears, all you have to do is listen.

Nordsund Blood & Nordsund Gold for Zebra 2 sells for from The Unfinished

Thoughts

I’m always pretty excited when I see an e-mail announcing a new library from The Unfinished, especially when it is a Zebra 2 or an Omnisphere 2 product. Matt has been creating unique and sophisticated sound design libraries for quite some time. I first got acquainted with his work when he was producing packages for Absynth, a powerful synthesizer that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. In addition to creating for the aforementioned, Matt also creates libraries for other products such as Kontakt and Diva, to name a couple. To me, however, the strength of his designs have always been for Zebra 2 and Omnisphere. His libraries have a unique character in that they always seem to capture Matt’s un-dying appreciation and love of soundtrack music, especially the dark, the mysterious and the atonal. I’m always fascinated with the subtleties of the sound, the kind that sits underneath in an almost sinister way and can get in your face with one edit of a filter. I’m forever taking his bass lines for instance, and using them as a building block for something quite larger, whether an electronic tour de force, an industrial dystopia or fluttering underneath something serene and ambient.

So, what exactly is Blood and Gold and how are they related? These 2 libraries have their roots in the cold north, the Nordic Noir as Matt calls it. The libraries were created for Uno Helmersson and Patrik Andren for the final season of the successful crime drama, The Bridge. Blood represents the atonal, the off kilter with odd time signatures that allows you to add the dissonance to the colder and steadier beat of Gold. It’s up to the composer to either find a balance between the 2 which allows them to speak together or to separate them and let them truly just represent themselves. The character of the sound and movement is quite different even though there are similarities in design.

A lot of the patches Matt provides, maybe with the exception of the Pads and Soundscapes, pretty much need a lot of layering as, by themselves, they are quite minimal. There are enough patches in these packages to play around with for days upon days, experimenting to find the right combinations. Also, seeing as Zebra is modular, many of the building blocks can be easily modified and given a very different personality as simply as changing the EQ or opening up the filter using the X-Y Pad or changing the properties of a COMB filter.

Blood – BL Directive ARP

When the latest update of Zebra was just recently released, one of the things I was hoping for was the addition of a “latch” function added to the ARP section. Alas, it was not to be so I continue on utilizing my sustain pedal (a performers best friend, at times). A lot of patches released in these libraries are arpeggiated, especially the bass lines, loops, ARPs, and sequences. I tend to always hone in on the bass llnes as, in my humblest opinion, no one who designs sounds for Zebra does it better than The Unfinished. In “Blood””, one of the most effective and downright gritty bass lines is called Directive. This patch has a dual signal path which utilizes a Noise Oscillator and a Voltage Control Filter in the 1st path, and 2 analog Oscillators and a Voltage Control Filter in the 2nd path. The Noise filter is assigned to Envelope 3 which, if you notice, has a slightly slower attack and release which provides for a lengthier “grit sound” on top of the fast attack / fast release of the first 2 envelopes. The arpeggiator for the patch is pretty basic as it provides forward motion using 8 steps and 1/8th notes. One trick I learned here is that if you “open up the EQ” in the effects section on the lower and low mid frequencies and set the ARP to “as played” (the Bass lines are chromatic), you can add a drum like sound to the bass pattern if you depress and hold one of the upper octave keys to one of the lower octave depressed keys. Lastly, if you really want to get gritty, change the Low Pass Vintage filter in VCF 2 to a Band Pass Notch…the results are pretty impressive.

Blood – BL Directive XY Pad

Another area where Matt really does a superb job is assigning Macros to the XY Pads. This allows the developer to help the performer almost cheat. Zebra provides 4 of these XY Pads in which numerous parameters can be assigned to each XY Pad. I call it cheating because you don’t actually have to make changes at the modular level of the synthesizer, all you have to do is to slide the axis to produce some astonishing results. In the BL Directive patch, you can control 4 distinct function, including the filter, the envelope and the reverb/delay effects. Personally, unless I’m looking for something unpredictable, I tend to only modify the envelope settings at the modular/synthesis level, especially if it is some kind of sequence patch.

The other area where these libraries truly excel are, yes, you guessed it, the PADS!! One thing Zebra can truly do is create lush string and brass sounds. When you have a great backing section already worked out, there is nothing more satisfying than finding THE Pad to accompany it. Playing through this library, one of the Pads in the Blood library that I kept returning to (and barely doing any modification to) is “Atrophy Wife” …it is described as dirty and ethereal with a long release time. The sound of the PAD is almost orchestral and to play it effectively, one must take a pretty sparse approach to it…you’ll want to let the sound build then, when it is at its peak, let it go and let the sound gently dissolve into a resonant silence.

Due to the interdependencies in the signal path, this pad is more complex than it looks. It uses both a VCF and a XMF (Cross Modulation Filter) that affect a White Noise Oscillator. Oscillator 2, though standing all alone in the 1st signal path, uses Pulse Width Modulation to affect the 3rd signal path where Oscillator 1 passes through the Cross Modulation Filter. Just to note, the XMF. Just as a gee-whiz, the XMF is a self-oscillating filter with independent distortion and a separate audio rate input for FM. It is a powerful tool however you may want to watch its effect on your CPU.

Overall, Matt has, once again, created a masterpiece with endless possibilities. The presets actually make learning this modular synth quite fun, given its ominous character and complexity. So, if you are interested in learning about synthesis, this is definitely the tool and the Unfinished Blood and Gold is definitely the library to take your music to places unheard and unknown!!

Gold for Zebra 2 sells for £24.99; Gold for both Zebra 2 / Zebra HZ sells for £34.99
Blood for Zebra 2 sells for £24.99; Blood for both Zebra 2 / Zebra HZ sells for £34.99

Nordsund Blood & Nordsund Gold for Zebra 2 are available from The Unfinished

Facts

Blood and Gold for Zebra 2 each contains 150 patches and downloads as 3.9 MB, each, and requires Zebra 2, Version 2.8.
Blood and Gold for Zebra HZ each contains 150 patches and downloads as 5.2 and 4.4 MB, respectively, and requires Zebra HZ.
Categories for Blood include: ARPs, Basses, Bass Lines, Drums, Keyboards, Leads, Loops, Mallets, Pads, Soundscapes, SFX, Sequences, and Synths. The HZ version utilizes the Diva filters, as well.
Categories for Gold include: ARPs, Basses, Bass Lines, Drums, Keyboards, Leads, Loops, Mallets, Pads, Soundscapes, SFX, and Sequences, The HZ version utilizes the Diva filters, as well.

Nordsund Blood & Nordsund Gold for Zebra 2 are available from The Unfinished