Pros: Outstandingly moody and emotional sounds, effects and ambiences.



Cons: Kompakt's syncable funtions under-utilized. Sounds might be too overdone for some tastes.




Bottom line: A potential lifesaver in music-for-picture applications, and killer for music composition too.




A lot of hardware keyboards have wowed us over the years with entrancing one-note symphonies that appear just a few patches in from the top of their preset banks. The sequential Circuits Prophet-VS brought evolving textures within reach of many. The Roland D-50 gave us "Digital Native Dance," an atmospheric splash followed by a whoosh and a startling, spiky marimba loop. The Kawai K4 offered a few choirs on wheels, and of course the Korg Wavestation was positively drenched in one-note wonders, layered with evolving textures and in-time, syncable percussion elements.



Morphology's strong suit is bringing this idea forward into the sounds of today, providing the kind of animated pads, effects, and atmospheres that can make a whole cue in a movie or TV soundtrack, add palpable mood to a pop song, or just overwhelm everything if used ham-fistedly. Programmer Ian Boddy has been mining this vein for years; the Zero-G back catalog is full of his outstanding atmospheric collections. Near as I can tell, Morphology is made from all-new material and though a number of vintage synths were used in its production, the sounds themselves are quite timeless and shouldn't date nearly as quickly as some sample libraries do.



The size of the sound library is impressive. And it isn't pumped up with filler, either. There's a lot of quality material here. Opening the Atmospheres bank, we're presented with a number of sub-banks. The first of these, Arpeggiations, houses everything from murky, moist textures like "Burbling" to gossamer, airy constructions like "Frosty Morning." Six more categories within Arpeggiations hold around a dozen patches each. Some standouts? "Spacious Events," whose name holds a clue as to what it'd be absolutely perfect for - a sound installation in a science museum or theme-park attraction. "Lost World," found under Eerie, would have been perfect for the scenes where George Lucas established Tatooine as "a desolate place" in the first Star Wars. In fact, it would also nail the vibe of another Lucas film, THX1138, with its minimalist, musique concrete electronic score. "Scary Reverse," in the Scary category (still in Atmospheres) made me think of being sucked into the dream world in Nightmare on Elm Street.



The Drones folder contains exactly what you'd think - drones - but these are far from static. They evolve with more subtlety perhaps than some of the other sounds, but nothing in Morphology sits still. "Low Guitar in D" offers a reverb-smeared melody that can be used to great effect if you play chords. Harmonic Loops holds some of the most beautiful sounds in the entire collection. They'd be great for communicating longing, sorrow, tears of joy. Strong but quiet emotions. They're the kind of thing that'll likely turn up in a lot of TV movies. Placed under better acting than that, though, they could be devastatingly effective. Big kudos to Boddy's collaborator Markus Reuters for his contributions here.



As achingly beautiful as the Harmonic Loops material is, the Industrial area is dangerous, menacing, and downright annoying: drills, machinery, bangs and crashes, catastrophic equipment failure. People are enslaved and maimed in these soundscapes. "Shimmering," within the Click & Glitch category, is a slight departure and a nice tribute to the Six Million Dollar Man's signature bionic sound effect.



Pads & Synths offers sounds of a more everyday nature, although even these are twisted in some strange and wonderful ways. These are the sounds to reach for if you're doing dance music and want something just a little off-kilter. Some of them don't lend themselves to playing your own chords on, though. They lock you into whatever major or minor tonality is baked in. A small selection of nifty lead sounds briefly breaks from convention here. These sound impossibly fat without that rankling analog outta-tune sound that often accompanies fat texture.



All in all, there's very little to say against Morphology. I was slightly disappointed that most of the motion can't be MIDI-synced; it's built into the samples rather than built up in Kompakt's engine. So that's a slight bummer. Also, it could be argued that Boddy's done all your work for you. It's a valid opinion, but some composers will likely thank their lucky stars for the completeness of some of these patches. They're a potential boon to the music-for-picture crowd. But in the final analysis, this work is so well done, so imbued with mood and emotion, that it's a pleasure to recommend it.



Kompakt Synthesis In addition to the main event - the animated pads, ambiences, and effects - Morphology also includes a selection of plain analog waveforms designed to take advantage of Kompakt's synthesis features and let you sculpt your own synth sounds. Triangle, triangular sawtooth, sawtooth, square, wide rectangular, and narrow rectangular (pulse) waves are included, apparently sourced from real analog VCOs, though the source isn't named. The proof is in the sound, though, and these sound woolly and wild just like real VCOs do. Bravo to Zero-G for this extra little bit of value-added content. Be aware that this collection is shipped without Mac OS X support, but the update is free to registered users and painless to install.