Arturia Efx Fragments £80

Whether you want to build a glitchy vocal, stutter up your rhythms or just bring aural chaos, you'll find a capable ally in this new sound reshaper

Since Arturia's launch in 1999, the Grenoblebased synth crafters have been regularly delivering refreshingly innovative products, expanding far beyond formerly conventional ideas of synthesis. While remarkably accurate software versions of classic hardware synths can be found in the company's robust libraries, such as the bursting-at-the-seams V Collection, Arturia's central aim - to broaden the horizons of music makers- has also seen them producing a slew of vibrant sound manipulating tools. Releases have included versatile compressors, filters, and delays, such as the expansive Delay Eternity, and most importantly, their electrifying wavetable synth wonderland, Pigments. It's in this same spirit of creative sound design, that the company presents Efx Fragments, a granular reshaper which allows users to extract new playing fields of sound via the power of granular processing.

This type of granular-based audio modification is built around the idea of affecting a sound's chopped-up smaller segments, and re-wiring their timing, the space between them, their pitch, and how these grains operate within the context of the project's rhythm track. While there are delicate and precise applications of this carefully timing vocal stutters for example - the immediate granular re-shaping that Efx Fragments offers out of the box opens up entirely new possibilities and hints alluringly at new textural directions.

Capture the fragment