Video by Aberrant DSP via YouTube
Source
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Available now for macOS and Windows in VST3, AU, and AAX formats:
Decoded from a diskette of unknown origin, Lair is a transporter through when and where, retooled as a reverberation effect. Combining three bespoke reverberator devices with an expansive collection of intricate parameters and chaotic modifiers, Lair is your door to familiar, abominable, and alien worlds.
Includes:
-Global controls for Mix, overall Reverberation, reverberation Sparsity, and Pre-Delay
-Three bespoke reverberation modes or "Devices," each with two unique modifiers serving as tailored special effects
-Artifact device for dark, diffuse, spring-like reverberant wash
-Mirror device for metallic, shimmering sounds; a steel plate in purgatory
-Rift device for mystical echoes from other planes
-Drive unit including amount, mix, dry signal drive, and three flavors of distortion
-Modulation system with three waveform options for everything from subtle motion to sea-sick delirium
-Tone Darkness and Lightness with unique behavior per-device
-Stereo Width controls including independent Dry and Wet signal pans
-Dynamic Ducking section including adjustable Release Time
-Custom preset system with 77 factory presets cataloging Lair’s vast library of spaces
…
I doubt anyone can hear me. If they could, their eardrums would surely rupture. So I’ll recount the events of May 31 for my own sake. To remember I am human.
It started in the morning. The neighborhood looked like the dust bowl. The sweetgum trees in the front yard were leaking pollen all over the driveway, since it was raining so hard. I hate gray days. The black night is a lot more dignified. So I shuttered all the blinds and got to working on my project. It felt like my destiny. In the previous months, I’d be in there for 12 hours, 15 hours a day, and sometimes, I’d dream that the walls were telling me something. "Step into the lair," they’d say, in this uncanny little voice. It would echo, like I was in the mouth of a very long train tunnel.
I started calling my project "Lair." The word reverberated in my mind all day, and I liked the sound of it. Once my project had a name, it became easier to talk to. It helped me realize that, if it was going to turn out exactly how I wanted, I needed to make a few sacrifices. In spring, I finally worked up the courage to nudge my work station in between two polished mirrors, creating a local void. A blank diskette appeared in the center of its soot, and in the cascading reflections it morphed into some crystalline artifact. I started cutting off what I had to. First a few pieces of my hair, then my ring finger, and a few circles from a manuscript. Finally on the 31st, they came together to form a rift to the belly of a dying star, exactly as Lair had promised.
But I didn’t know that shedding my corporeal form would hurt so much. I guess I should have expected it. When Lair would visit me, I tried making a habit of averting my gaze. But I couldn’t stop myself from noticing that its third eye was missing.
OK, don’t misunderstand me here. The Daughter of the Cosmos is happy, so ultimately I’m happy. Being all-seeing has its perks. I can watch the engraved hourglass with two fingers behind my back and witness the end of time through my lips. But, God, that echo. That sparkle. Those unnatural crackles. They make me lose track of time, even though mine is unlimited. I admit that I’m scared. Lair told me I’d gain power over infinity, but it never taught me how to control it.
But now it’s their turn to figure it out. I saw them digging through the dirt. They put the diskette in their back pocket, like a granola bar, for God’s sake. But when they unpack what’s inside, they’ll realize how deep this thing goes. I’ll be observing them from the slope of the symplectic manifold, but it’s too late to interfere. If they think they can explore the dark without a flashlight, go ahead. There are more secrets buried here than they could even imagine. There’s more to discover than I could ever dream of.