Groove Shadow Elastik | Remix Magazine

Devoted entirely to polyrhythmic backdrops to layer behind your main beat, Groove Shadow Elastik is filled with abstract effects loops, stretched circuit-bends and atmosphere-based sequnces. These elements have been grouped to form more than 400 "shadows," or thematic folders, and are derived from incidental sounds that occur in nature and industry, including electrical components, machinery, musical instruments, phrases, audio manipulations and a variety of other stranger sources. Each shadow is made up of four layers, split into four frequncy ranges - 1,600 unique loops across the entire 3.5 GB collection. Ueberschall even included more than 4,000 original source sounds, relevantly mapped throughout the programs, so that you can finely augment or create your own custom shadows.

Shadows are categorized by light, medium and hard intensities, which sounds cool in theory because it allows you to approach your groove-building dynamically. But in practice, those guidelines aren't very well executed and had lots of false alarms and misappropriation.

The Elastik player's "loop eye" interface proved to be the ideal host for such a library. Layers and elements can be individually filtered, panned, reversed, ptich-shifted, time-stretched or sent to separate outputs. By adjusting the start and end loop-points, I was able to mesh whole elements or partial sections together in perfectly locked time. You can even auto-splice elements down to a granular level with the results mapped across the keyboard when you're feeling all Aphex Twin-like. Groove Shadow Elastik feels as much at home for film and game composers as it should be for triggering live during performances or DJ sets.