Spitfire Audio Tenebra, who are thou? I love the sonic territory modern soundtrack music occupies—a fascinating blurring of lines between acoustic, analog, and digital sources. Composers are now scoring with modular synths, found sounds, and full orchestras, all of which get blended in their DAWs to carve out fresh sonic signatures for the latest season’s show or film.
Spitfire Audio has a long history of collaborating with world-class composers to create tools that reflect their particular sonic territories, like Hans Zimmer, Hauschka, Charlie Clouser, and Ólafur Arnalds, to name a few. Tenebra is their new collaboration with The Newton Brothers, composers at the forefront of the horror and thriller genres. The Newton Brothers are well known for their exploratory style, constantly seeking out new sound sources to blend into their work for that unique edge. In recent films, they’ve branched out thematically, moving into more action-packed films within the Marvel universe and also into quieter, more intimate soundscapes with their latest soundtrack for ‘The Life of Chuck’. Working with Spitfire to create this library showed itself to be a similar balancing act—it’s heavily weighted toward horror themes but also has leanings of intimacy and quiet emotion.
Built on the Solar Engine
Spitfire Audio Tenebra is built on the Solar plugin, which appears to be an evolution of the eDNA plugin. It’s a nice touch that it’s a standalone plugin, so it doesn’t require any version of Native Instruments’ Kontakt.
The core of the library is its sample sources, which are taken directly from the Newton Brothers’ own archives. These include orchestral string samples, medieval instruments, various unusual wind instruments, modular synths, and human vocal samples. The composers themselves expertly blended all these sources into the library’s presets, which are the perfect jumping-off point for exploring the library’s capabilities.
Tension and Atmosphere
Spitfire Audio Tenebra is all about creating atmosphere and tension. While quiet moments are possible, the plugin’s greatest strength is its ability to ratchet up the tension. The blends of sound create new sonic worlds where you can hear glimpses of a recognizable sound, like a vocal, but it’s quickly melded with new timbres and mashed alongside a bowed piano or a noisy drone to become something entirely new. There are many bending, portamento-style sounds that build this tension, along with some rhythmic hits and pulsing sequences. However, the vast majority of the library consists of pads, drones, and evolving soundscapes.
The presets are excellent starting points, but you can also quickly build your own sounds in the Solar engine by adding two separate sound sources and then blending between them, either with LFO modulation or the mod wheel. There are also banks of effects you can add to each side of the engine to further sculpt each sound.
I found that the library needed dedicated time to fully grasp its potential. Many of the sounds evolve slowly, and a quick browse will not get you anywhere close to discovering the potential within this library. Leaving patches running often takes you into very different territory over time, and being patient with it is definitely rewarding. It’s also worth noting that different sounds are often layered across the keyboard, so exploring in different octaves will often yield surprising results.
Spitfire Audio Tenebra: The Timbre
The timbre of the sounds in this library is very arresting—there’s a lot going on texturally, and the growls, noise, and sharp edges of the sounds are particularly interesting. I especially liked the haunting vocal textures that can soar over a drone or the intimate whisperings that occur within a pad. It’s a very haunting experience.
Tenebra lends itself very well to the horror genre but can also function in other spaces. For example, I could imagine it being incredibly useful in darker electronic music.
Pricing and Availability
- Size: approximately 11GB
- Cost: $199
- Format: Available in all major plugin formats. NI Kontakt is NOT required.
You can find more information and purchase options on the Spitfire Audio product page.
If interested in Spitfire’s other composer collaborations, check out our Ólafur Arnalds STRINGS: Cells review for more examples of unique musical partnerships.
