Dreamgaze

Centered around 40 new gauzy Serum presets, producer Ben Bromley explores the varied colors of Dream Pop and Shoegaze with songstarters, guitar, bass, drums, percussion, vocals, and ambience.

The roots of Dream Pop and Shoegaze trace back to the textural psychedelia of the 1960s and ’70s, inspiring the ethereal sounds of artists like the Cocteau Twins, the Cure, and New Order in the ’80s. By the early ’90s, pedal-gazing sonic explorers like My Bloody Valentine, A.R. Kane, and Slowdive turned the dial further with gauzy distorted reverbs and deeper tone bending. At the turn of the millennium, these hypnagogic sounds influenced a new generation of artists like Beach House, Boards of Canada, Broadcast, M83, and the XX, who carried these styles forward to new places fusing elements of R&B, dance, and ambient genres. Splice Originals: Dreamgaze seeks to trace a line through these various styles with colors—both old and new—to inspire you to paint your own sonic worlds. Splice producer Ben Bromley used a mix of electric guitars, acoustic guitars, and bass to create the base of this pack. He then reprocessed sounds from classic rhythm boxes Emu Drumulator, Linn LM-1, and Roland 707 and recorded a vintage drum kit at the iconic Sound Factory studio in Los Angeles, to craft a set of accompanying drums and top loops, with additional acoustic percussion. He also crafted Serum Presets with MIDI and Audio Loops primarily using wavetables taken from a Yamaha PS-20 (the analog organ used extensively by Beach House), a Roland Taurus Bass, as well as various VHS, Tape, and Ambient Noise samples. Each songstarter loop is processed to capture the dreamlike feeling of these eras for quick inspiration. The individual elements of each composition are left a bit more clean for you to rearrange and reprocess as you like. You’ll also find a collection of one-shot harmonic, drum, and percussive samples to round out the set.