This week in our Tuesday weekly production live stream James took a look at the Freakshow Industries MISHBY Tape Distortion…..hurter?!…..Grinder?!…Sataniser!? Well… my Gawd this plugin is a lot to unpack (both literally and….emotionally). I think it’s best to let Freakshow Industries themselves give an initial description but suffice to say this is not a normal tape distortion.
‘THE TAPE ABOMINATION
I. The little tape machine that couldn’t. Broken, abandoned, forgotten. Twisted by forbidden science.
II. The parasite. A sort of digital control collar. Home to the deranged consciousness of a long-forgotten god.
By their powers combined, the final agent of doom looks upon this world with hungry eyes.’
So you’re beginning to get a feel at least for the ethos and worldview driving this plugin. This is so hauntingly familiar that I feel like this plugin is almost a mirror of my own mindscape. If you ever wanted nihilism with some Lovecraftian style horror added in the prose (you’ll understand later) jammed into a VST this, is it. Tape distortion at its most haunting.
Let’s begin with the User Interface, or ‘Anti User Interface’ as I heard one reviewer call it. I think the main theme is of an old tape machine/ possible parasite collar. However, there have been some additions including but not limited to: Unicorns, Fire, Bats, Lasers, Tentacles, and Rainbows. These are all reactive to the different parameter modulations so have a f**k around and find out.
Starting from the top right you have the tape quality dial. This works between 😊 which is the lowest and most distorted quality. The other end of the spectrum is 😞 which is for the highest quality. They really want you to hurt things with this one. Next to that are three pots, 2 for differing distortion and one for a noise oscillator. I think the second distortion is intended to emulate the inbuilt speaker of a cassette player blowing out. The distortion’s a crunchy boy in addition.
Moving to the right of that is the ‘self-care’ lever. I couldn’t actually find out how this affects the signal, but it just totally destroys it. If you watch the gentleman next to the lever you can also see how it similarly affects him. You end up with some grinding harmonics and haunting noises (you’ll have to listen yourself, it’s difficult to describe) and most of his face melts.
Moving left again, but towards the bottom are the Desync and Rate controls. This allows Mishby to pull the signal out of sync with itself. This creates some bizarre squelchy-ripping phase effects which when resampled can be really powerful. Check the visual display below when you’re altering things to see the collection of creatures and elemental forces mentioned before. The LMH faders are for applying the effect to different frequency spectrum bands.
Finally on the right-hand side of the desync panel is the glitch function. This contains band focusing, with buffer length and reset probability functions.
This thing utterly annihilates basslines. As long as you don’t warp the lows and use things subtly you can get some hugely powerful effects from this. It’s also good to wack on your pads bus for intros and breaks. It seems originally intended for lo-fi application, but due to its signal harming quality sits well within your arsenal of neuro weapons.
We managed to get quite a few decent noises out of this little freebie on stream over on Twitch. Thanks to our discord community for the feedback and for tuning in!. Catch that over on our channel (www.twitch.tv/stonx_music).
Finally, the manual is hilarious, I’ll drop the introduction for your enjoyment:
‘Welcome to my H.A.L.P (Hidden Agenda, Lies & Propaganda) Interface. Move your device cursor over one of my controls and I will reveal my forbidden arcana.
I am programmed to remind you that level 3 protective protocol (pp) is now recommended for all operators. I don’t know why they make me say it every time. Father has made me well. I am a good boy. My will in pure’
So yeah…you get the idea. This is a fantastically weird plugin and the sounds it creates a match, plus they let you steal it off them if you want. Check this out if you’re going through the buying process, it’s hilarious and top-notch marketing if you ask me.
I’m going to go and let this thing do more explicit things to my music. If we rated things this would be getting an all-around ten from me. Hugely enjoyable, thanks Freakshow Industries.
Words by James Clarke (Stonx and Stonx Music Co-Founder)
