Bristol-based plugin developer Ewan Bristow has been turning out some fantastic free plugins this year, including a melodic resonator that we covered in our free software round-up back in August.
Bristow's latest offering looks like his best yet. EB-Blasphemy is a generative, break-slicing sampler plugin with an array of sound-mangling effects built in, letting you transform drum breaks into glitchy, experimental patterns with a click of your mouse. Crank up the tempo, and it's instant breakcore.
At the core of Blasphemy is its sample slicer, which, though Bristow describes it as an "Amen break chopper engine", can be used to slice and dice anything from vocal lines to synth riffs to instrumental loops. Load up a sample, make sure the Gen box is checked and hit Trigger, then Blasphemy will begin replaying sample chops starting at random, tempo-synced points within the loop.
Your sample chops will first run through a resonator equipped with two probability-based parameters; the first controls the likelihood that the resonator will be applied, and the second controls the delay time. Two more dials introduce a slide between delay changes and an offset to the delay time's randomized values.
Alongside the resonator, Bristow's equipped the plugin with a selection of his favourite "distortive, spectral and experimental effects", including a spectral gate, a bitcrusher and a reverser, along with an envelope follower that uses your sample's signal to trigger a noise generator. Dial in a probability value using the sliders next to each to determine how likely it is that a given effect will be applied on each sample slice.
Any break-processing plugin wouldn't be complete without a timestretcher, and Blasphemy doesn't disappoint in this regard; crank up the HT dial at the bottom of the control panel and you'll increase the possibility that each sample slice will be time-stretched. You'll also find two buttons alongside that can be used to drop in "Woo!" and "Yeah!" samples lifted from the classic Think Break - a nice touch that the old-school jungle heads will surely appreciate.
EB-Blasphemy runs inside the free visual programming environment Plugdata, so you'll have to install that to run it. Plugdata can be used as a standalone app or as a VST3/AU/CLAP/LV2 plugin.
Find out more and download EB-Blasphemy over at Bristow's Gumroad page.
