Excite Audio has announced the next release in its Bloom plugin series, Bloom KSHMR.
Developed in partnership with producer, sound designer and DJ KSHMR, it's described as an expressive instrument that "seamlessly blends Indian and South Asian musical heritage with modern production".
Bloom KSHMR is equipped with more than 250 presets and eight sound banks covering melodic, percussive and textural elements, including sitars, tablas, bansuri flutes, vocals and much more.
All of the plugin's sounds were curated by KSHMR, and many were recorded using "high-end analogue gear" in India and South Asia and performed by local instrumentalists.
Each preset is made up of a bank of 14 loops and one-shots, spread across the white notes on two octaves of the keyboard, with the black notes reserved for performance controls such as time-stretching and reversing.
Sounds are transposed to a choice of 24 scales and can be tweaked using four macros that introduce lo-fi character, tube-style saturation, chorus and delay.
Opening up the plugin's Edit panel allows you to load in your own sounds to Bloom KSHMR and access a number of more advanced editing functions, along with the plugin's filter, compressor, reverb and noise generator. Here you'll also find a 32-step sequencer and modulation engine that can be assigned to seven destinations.
"This came out a desire to create the ultimate Indian sample library, using the most talented musicians that I've met over the years," KSHMR says. "Bloom KSHMR features some of the most high-quality recordings I've ever done."
"I want to give people the ability to access these kinds of instruments, not just played by somebody down the street who picked it up, but somebody from the place that these instruments are from. Somebody who can play them authentically, who can give you the melody and the expression that you'd expect. We recorded hours and hours with each type of instrument and then picked the 'best of' to put into Bloom KSHMR."
Priced at £59/$59, Bloom KSHMR is available now in VST/VST3/AU/AAX formats for macOS and Windows. The plugin is also available in a Lite version for a reduced price of £29/$29.
Find out more on Excite Audio's website.
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