Spitfire Heirloom

Get your hankie ready as Spitfire's latest toolkit promises quick-fire access to devastatingly affecting instrumental flavours. But are Heirloom's emotion-tickling samples worth your money?

€199 PC MAC

What is it about certain film, television and video game scores that can move us so much? Is it some alchemic combination of melody and tone, in simpatico with the ups and downs of the characters that we're rooting for, which makes them so frequently affecting? Or is it something deeper? Some textural quality within the music itself, that if you could somehow bottle, would form a never ending repository of heartbreaking cues and themes. Spitfire Audio would certainly plump for the latter notion, and with the intricate, honest sounds of Heirloom, the company have sought to build such an emotive storehouse.

Recorded at the atmospheric environs of The Church Studios, Heirloom compiles an array of instrumental flavours, built around the style and approach of composer Keaton Henson. Its sensitive palette of samples stem from recordings of a weathered piano, chiming guitar textures, including volume swells, plucked bends and harmonics, delicate small ensemble strings and a curated platter of woodwinds. Perhaps the best explanation for the style of affecting music that Heirloom serves as a toolkit for is a simple quote, found throughout Heirloom's marketing; "It's the audial equivalent of the worn away seat of your father's favourite chair. Traces, marks and imprints left behind by those who are perhaps no longer with us. Gone, but never forgotten."

Fruit of the loom