Sounds.com has announced the availability of ZEL, a sound pack from rising EDM star Michael Brun.
Haitian DJ and producer Michael Brun shot to fame by fusing modern EDM styles with influences drawn from his Haitian roots — the salsa-like kompa, as well as rara, a style of festival music become massively popular across the nation.
On the heels of several hit releases, including 2016’s ‘All I Ever Wanted’ and the 2018 World Cup anthem ‘Positivo’, Brun gave back to his community by founding the Kid Coconut label, designed to be an outlet for other Haitian artists as well as his own music.
Brun has focused much of his efforts on feeding this success back into the communities that inspired him. He’s been mentoring aspiring musicians at the Audio Institute in Jacmel, Haiti, and raising funds and resources to provide modern music tools for the students there.
“Native Instruments gave a bunch of gear and software to the students, and I started my crash course on using Maschine and some of the other gear,” he says. “It was really exciting because I love all the Native Instruments products, and getting to share that was such a cool experience.”
The new exclusive sound pack available from today includes 20+ drum loops and one shots based on the traditional Caribbean instruments that have come to define his sound; it’s based on Brun’s (as-yet unreleased) track ‘Zel’ (which means “wings”), featuring the artists Strong G and Gardy Girault. “What Strong G is saying [on the track] is that music gives him wings,” Brun notes. “I feel like having access to a wide range of sounds [does the same] — it kind of takes you to a different place, somewhere you’ve never gone before.”
Over the last 20 years Native Instruments has worked towards a vision of democratizing music creation and breaking down barriers of product complexity, price and education, to inspire and empower all music lovers to create. In line with this vision the company provides equipment and resources to a wide range of community outreach projects globally, focused on improving the lives of disadvantaged groups and enabling more people to express themselves musically.
Sounds.com from Native Instrument is the only sounds subscription service of its kind to offer a completely free full access trial version, encouraging even more creators of all styles backgrounds and abilities to experiment.
The Beta platform which launched in January 2018 now hosts more than 650,000 royalty-free sounds – from orchestral scoring to pop, and pop and beyond. Current sounds available include loops and sample content from Native Instruments’ acclaimed Expansions – plus exclusive content from over 300 creators, including leading suppliers such as The Loop Loft, MVP Loops, and Symphonic Distribution. Furthermore, diverse artists and labels such as Grammy winner Latroit or prolific hip-hop producer Kid Capri have made content available exclusively for Sounds.com users.
Commenting on the new release Brun says the two sample packs taken together can be both instructive and inspirational for other producers.
“The process behind the pack was to come up with an arrangement, and stemming out specific parts of the song so that people could see a clear outline of what a song that I’d work on would look like,” he says, noting that he also incorporated a number of additional, complimentary sounds as well.
“The pack is really about capturing moments versus having a super clean, high-quality, polished sound,” Brun continues. “I believe that when you’re recording something, that the way you recorded in that moment basically can’t be replicated. You can probably work really hard to adjust things and get it pretty close to it, but to me the vibe when you capture something is as special as the sound itself. So this pack really reflects that moment in time, and I hope it helps people get transported in a way to somewhere else as well.”
For Brun, it’s another opportunity to share the Haitian musical styles he grew up on with an outside world that he hopes will finally get familiar.
“I think the thing about Haitian music right now is the fact that it’s just so untapped; a lot of people might not even know what Haitian music sounds like,” he says. “Rara music, which is the foundation for the release, is really obscure to the world, even though it’s such a huge part of the music culture in Haiti. I think [this pack] is going to open up the talent of a lot of people and producers with these really unique sounds.”
More information: Native Instruments
