Introducing: GUITAR HIVE

video upload by The Crow Hill Company

"You have never heard a sample library like this before. Instant, Cure, Smiths, Cocteau, Lanois, Eno, Edge, Steve Reich vs Pat Metheny under your fingertips. An homage to great British guitar beds from shoe gaze to stinking student union bars in the north of England to the pristine layers of Reich’s Electric Counterpoint. Construct endless layers of interweaved guitar parts that become a highly controllable sonic weapon that goes from elegant to pure filth in no less than a turn of a dial.

Join the minds (and fingers) behind this; Christian Henson and Theo Le Derf on the beginning of your Hive journey. This is the gift we all wanted this Christmas."

Press release follows:


EDINBURGH, UK: The Crow Hill Company is proud to announce availability of FILTH - GUITAR HIVE — heading up its FILTH sub-range of products produced and recorded at the Annex in Edinburgh, Scotland, its self-styled safe house packed with vintage equipment, rarified instruments, synths, processing, and potential, with the main emphasis being on creating more experimental sample projects that think out of the box and are the very antithesis of virtual instruments; in this case, guitar performances on a limited-edition Fender Telecaster by Theo Le Derf, D.I. (Direct Injection) recorded via a pristine Thermionic Culture The Rooster Valve pre-amp with EQ & attitude and mixed through countless processors to give users control over the uncontrollable, ultimately providing what all at the music-making community tools-maker collectively yearn for in the process... utter filth — as of December 18…

Now knowing what FILTH - GUITAR HIVE is positioned as being, best to take a function-highlighting, whistle-stop tour of its clearly considered UI (User Interface) implemented to take that mission statement to the musical masses, filthy or otherwise. On the face of it, the front panel-dominating ‘Obutsu!’ is basically a ‘filth’ dial, allowing users to effortlessly transform their sound with three simultaneous signals — from tasteful and pure D.I. to a crunchy deluxe amplifier, all the way to overdriven feedback and tempo-synced tremolo; SHIMMER is a dual-direction granular pitch shift fed into a massive reverb chamber, creating a cascading, shimmering veil of tone; DRIVE is an unmistakably distorted, crunchy signal, modelled after a tube amp that has been utterly misused; ECHO is a tape-based, multi-tap echo/delay that syncs to the host tempo — an associated speed control determines what subdivision of the beat the repeats play at; and SPLOSH is a suitably reasonable decaying reverb for anyone’s roomy needs.

Needless to say, general controls are also worth noting — namely, VOL adjusts the volume of the plug-in instance in question; TUNE, changes the tuning of the instrument; and METERS, effectively lets the user know that there is an issue with their routing if they can see something but cannot hear it. It goes without saying, of course, that a list of tempo-synced, performance-based sound sets are available for users to play with — and apply tweaks to — via the preset window, which is what FILTH - GUITAR HIVE really boils down to, after all.

“If The Cure, Cocteau Twins, Brian Eno’s work with Daniel Lanois and The Edge, Pat Metheny’s work with Steve Reich on ‘Electric Counterpoint’ are your thing, and if you use your shoes to gaze at more than walk on, then we think you’ve come to the right place.” So says composer Christian Henson, who founded The Crow Hill Company on the back of primarily working on television and film soundtracks, so clearly knows what he is talking about, adding: “Everyday working as professional musicians, songwriters, and composers gives us new challenges — new ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’. Obviously FILTH - GUITAR HIVE is no exception here, something we hope you agree becomes a ‘don’t know how I ever did without it.’

“Indeed, our main emphasis with FILTH is to create more experimental sample projects that think out of the box and are the very antithesis of virtual instruments,” continues Christian Henson, helpfully drawing things to an appropriate close with: “We see them more like a creative thread that we have handed over to you to weave into your work.”

FILTH - GUITAR HIVE is available to purchase for £29.00 GBP — as an AAX-, AU-, VST-, and VST3-format-compatible sample-based virtual instrument plug-in comprising over 5.0 GB of uncompressed material (compressed losslessly to 3.2 GB) that loads directly into a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) — directly from The Crow Hill Company here: https://thecrowhillcompany.com/guitar-hive/

For more in-depth information, including some superb-sounding audio demos, please visit the dedicated FILTH - GUITAR HIVE webpage here: https://thecrowhillcompany.com/guitar-hive/

FILTH - GUITAR HIVE installation and activation requires installation of The Crow Hill App — an easy-to-use app designed by the best in the business to provide seamless download, installation, integration, calibration, and organisation of The Crow Hill Company tools — available for free from here: https://thecrowhillcompany.com/crow-hill-app/