BLEASS Dragonfly £25

Bringing a fresh approach to one of the oldest of modulation effects, Dragonfly re-thinks tremolo as a reactive rippler for quirky pop

If you were to ask a roomful of producers what their favorite modulation effect is, it’s unlikely any would shout ‘tremolo’. Originating as a guitar effect back in the mists of time, today, tremolo’s simple LFO volume fluctuations don’t quite entice in the same way as say creative delay processing, high-pass filtering, or blazing distortion. That said, with increasingly off-the-wall production techniques more commonplace in modern pop (we’re looking at you Finneas), there’s been something of a resurgence of interest in how tremolo can be creatively applied in a fresh context.

That’s precisely what French company BLEASS have set out to achieve with Dragonfly. Established as recently as 2018, the company has already received praise for a growing storehouse of meaty-sounding effects plugins. This ear-pleasing arsenal is also fully usable on iOS too, which is neat for those of us that like to keep tweaking things on our morning commute.

Here be dragons

Dragonfly is squarely focused on tremolo. Opening it up as an AU within Logic we’re presented with an enticing graphical UI that spotlights an animated dragonfly. This dragonfly flaps its wings in oscillation with whichever sound source you’ve selected to be the trigger of your tremolo. Its upper wings represent the left channel, while the lower pair move in conjunction with the right channel.