Pod | Sound on Sound Magazine

Big Fish Audio have a fair few weird and wonderful releases in their sample CD catalogue (Things That Go Bump In The Night, Alien Guitars, and so forth) and their latest release — entitled simply Pod— slides nicely into the range like a new admission into a samplist’s mental asylum, complete with straitjacket and a Hannibal Lecter-style muzzle. Following only the vaguest of running formats, this 74-minute audio CD is essentially the sonic outpourings of its creator’s warped, but often highly original, mind.

Presented as a series of miniature soundscapes lasting anything between two and 70 seconds,Podprovides metallic, organic and downright terrifying blocks of sound that are far too nebulous to be considered simply as sound effects. At the same time, they are so atonal, non-rhythmic, and heavily processed beyond all recognition that you’d be hard-pushed to use them in a ‘traditional’ musical sense either. Drawing equal amounts of inspiration from industrial sound effects and vintage analogue synths, the fusion of all of Pod’s noises is enhanced by the tremendous feeling of space that most of the tracks naturally have, greatly helped by some cute external processing, a few decent pieces of studio outboard gear and a fascination with anything pitch-shifted and backwards.
From the deep sub-bass booms to the ultra-high tinkles, cracks and squeaks, the sounds are presented in a way that seems to dare you to find a use for them. There are no multisamples, no real breakbeats to speak of and very little in the way of identifiable instrumentation, but asking for Podto be more like a conventional sample CD would be like asking for the Blair Witch Projectto be filmed in 70mm widescreen, rather than on camcorders. Although the tracks are divided into categories (such as ‘Ambience-Medium’ and ‘Motif Non-Tonal’), such definitions seem almost irrelevant considering the sheer range of textural contrasts from one track to the next. Unless you know the disc intimately, this makes the track-auditioning process a little long-winded.

With any cutting-edge sample CD such as this, the creators often seem so focused on trying to produce something blindingly new and experimental that the CD’s overall usefulness suffers slightly. Whilst Podobviously sets out to shock and makes no excuses for it, at times the whole thing seems just a little too abrasive and unrelenting. Producer AKA Boony G is a master at putting the fear of God into your sampler, but seems to forget that even the scariest deep-space mutant alien movies have at least one or two quieter moments.

Gripes aside, Podis a brave and challenging sample CD, rich in harmonics and with a keen ear for keeping the creepy unsettling atmosphere going throughout. Its non-stop assault on your speakers, sampler and ultimately your brain should make it a must-have release for any programmer looking for a pure slice of ‘sound design’ madness perfect for multimedia, video games, soundtracks and scaring old ladies with.