El Jaguar, out now, is a rhythmic excursion from sound library sameness. This toolkit from boutique house MNTRA produces a deeply customizable sound world by re-amping through the legendary Picó sound systems of Barranquilla, Colombia. It’s something new, melding Montréal synth love and afro-Caribbean percussion into a new hybrid playground for producers.
Montreál to Colombia, Buchla to Picó
I had some sprawling conversations with La Hacienda Creative’s Brian D’Oliveira about this library, and I’ve been working with it for some weeks. MNTRA Instrument’s software is unlike most of what you’ve played with before, full of mystical geometric patterns that you manipulate in place of the conventional rows of knobs and faders. (“Animistic” is the phrase they use.) It’s not for everyone, but I kind of love that. I love that some people will hate the UIs — and some people will get lost in them right away. To get that feeling, you should definitely check out their free tools. That includes various instruments based on their deep MNDALA 2 engine (which in turn is built on the open-source HISE sampling engine). Or maybe the best place to get started s BOREALIS-LE, a unique “performance” reverb. That reverb uses a model of ancient acoustics, plus an envelope follower and dynamic controls, combined so that you can freely modulate it without any nasty reverb glitches.
One of the first things Brian and I talked about was steering away from sound libraries as cultural appropriation. Picó, for its part, has its own culture, and the associated champeta and guarapo genres, not just the better-known Colombian cumbia. (Mixmag did a long primer last fall if you’re interested.)
But what Brian and MNTRA did for El Jaguar was to take the Picó sound system and mix it with other materials. You can get Colombian sounds out of it, and the team who worked on this has deep roots in the music. But they’ve also added a ton of other elements through collaborations. Up north, the team added in Montréal-based Yulian Pugachevsky’s vintage synths and machines. (Above: 808, LinnDrum, analog modular with Serge and Buchla.) Back in Colombia, they worked live with Circuito Sonoro Lab—Laura Katic and Ximena Delat’s handmade-modular workshop in Cali. (See below – we’ll have to cover this separately!)
Approaching the sounds
What you get in the collection is a wide range of source sounds. From La Hacienda Creative’s studio, there are wooden drums, marimbas, African percussion, modular lines, plucked electric strings, and vintage drum machines. The best way to understand how to play the library is to know that all of that was re-amped through the Picó stacks in Barranquilla – with the rough edges recorded, as if you’re there. That then adds in the Circuito Sonoro sounds, which were produced live on-site.
You can take the plucked strings, various drum kits with their own genre-tilted vibes, the synths, pitched percussion (both 808 and kicks and such and Colombian Caribbean percussion like alegre, shaker, campana, etc.), and full drum machines, and mix it all together. There are extras like callouts, too, which – well I’m not ready to release this track yet but I wound up doing some absurd chopping with that.
At the simplest, you can pull up all these pre-built kits and multis and just start jamming. Let’s hear what that sounds like – here just using Fugue Machine Rubato, which I reviewed this week. This is just the sound of how raw and alive this is, without even getting much into the musicality of how you can play it. The Perform screen then lets you adjust macro parameters — which you could remap if you so choose– so we can hear in this case how their reverb sounds and what happens as you start to mix in that Picó sound.
To give you a sense of the range of content, here’s a walkthrough of presets via MNTRA. Those are nice, but it’s as you start to think of this as a toolkit that you really enjoy.
But there’s a lot more you can do with the MNTRA engine. In this case, I went ahead and added a layer to the mults, a bassline that starts over top. Unfortunately, you can’t for the moment build you own sample maps from the presets, but you can stack additional presets one octave over the next, etc.
Look in deeper, and you can add additional effects and modulation. Each of those shaded X/Y graphs allows you to map parameters by LFO or x/y/z parameters – see that wireframe visualization on the right-hand side of the screen. Unlike a lot of sample libraries, you’re not restricted to the way this has been set up; you can add additional processors (“Colours”) and then shape those with macros. All of that is also quite fast, so you can “shade in” a preset you like or move it in a different direction.
Here I’ve selected some stems from another project. Actually I’m enjoying even the sound of just these parts, but they also fit into the mix of that track. I switch the display so you can see what’s going on – the macros can control mic position, blending parts and the Picó system and ambience, and other parameters (plus obviously reverb). That lets you add additional dynamic qualities to your material:
There’s also an extensive sequencing engine, which you can use together with the sample slots to animate the sounds and add some dynamism. Brian’s background he tells me is in gaming, and you get that right away – the variations and generative qualities here are reminiscent of game audio and its real-time demands. You can really approach El Jaguar ad MNDALA in that way, to keep samples from becoming stale, making them more immersive. (Apologies for the term; I realize it’s coming up in a lot of conversations. Zeitgeist, perhaps.)
The Matrix tab gives you additional options for each slot, all powered by this open engine:
The trick is, you can use that mic info and modulation to control the mic settings – as if you’re there, though also in this trippy geometry-moving way, too, that is very MNDALA-specific. Here’s a terrific demo by Venezuelan producer Carlos Peña:
It’s all eminently playable, though – even if sequencing can also feel like playing it. Here’s Gnarly:
I found some tricks with MNDALA 2 generally, which I hope to share soon after going over them with Brian; he’s a master at working with this engine. This is, sorry, not your Dad’s Kontakt library. (I said what I said.)
Extra details on the recording
Specs – it’s a nice size, really, neither overwhelming nor lacking in detail:
Presets: 190
Atelier Presets: 73
Sample Maps: 240
Size: 9.20 GB
Round Robins: Up to 20
SSM powered samples: All sample maps enabled
Recording format: 384 kHz / 32 bit
Sample Format: 384 kHz / 32 bit
Multimic: Up to 4 microphone channels
Brian shared more of the recording process:
Our goal was to capture the physicality and resonance of the environment, not just the instruments themselves.
From the start, MNTRA has relied on Sankens CO-100s and CUX-100s for their incredible transparency and high-frequency range, capturing up to 100 kHz. The CO-100s are omnidirectional and extremely transparent, making them a mainstay for classical and high-resolution recordings. The CUX-100s offer both omni and cardioid patterns, allowing us to experiment with different microphone placements and capture a wide array of tonalities.
We also included a pair of custom handmade carbon microphones from Colombia, which provided a darker, vintage sound with a unique depth and sonic texture. When combined with the ultra-high-resolution sources, these carbon mics added a layer of warmth and complexity to the recordings.
For the contact mics, we used a pair of Organic Audio CJOSSUL Version 1 mics. These mics captured not just definition, but the physical vibrations and feeling of the surfaces, and when combined with all the available signals, allowed us to capture a “living” three-dimensional picture of the sound, reflecting how different elements of the resonance moved and interacted from the actual cabinet, to the space, to even making the birds and neighbours holer in reaction in the environment.
This entire process was a blend of guerrilla-style field recording and on-the-spot sound design. It was like a live experiment—deciding on microphone placements and combinations on the fly. Our aim was to shape these recordings into a reactive, expressive instrument within MNDALA 2, making the final product not just a collection of mic signals, but a dynamic sound design palette that you can dynamically use in the same manner you use synth parameters and not just a normal ‘mic signal’ mix.
El Jaguar is on a launch discount sale now.
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