SPITFIRE AUDIO Heirloom

The emotional ensemble

From the mind of acclaimed artist Keaton Henson comes a compositional toolkit of unique, modern scoring sounds, bestowed to enhance your sonic fingerprint with a beautiful human touch.

Heirloom features delicate strings, raw woodwinds, an inspiring piano and haunting guitars captured in London’s stunning Church Studios (Adele, The XX. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). Inherently contemporary and perfect for emotive writing, this sound library is the audial equivalent of the worn away seat of your father’s favourite chair. Traces, marks and imprints left behind by those who are perhaps no longer with us. Gone, but never forgotten.

Complex emotions made simple

Heirloom is perfectly poised to express emotions that are hard to put into words, capturing the contemplation of complex existential feelings, the human condition and the passing of time.

The quality of the performances captured is pure and expansive in character, lending themselves to enhanced emotive scoring. This expansive character provides endless inspiration, via sounds that will slot into any composer’s signature sound palette and compliment without taking over.

Heirloom has a strong sense of home comforts, with a beguiling familiarity that allows the composer to feel comfortable using the sounds in a stripped back setting. Beautiful raw woodwinds, delicate strings, an inspiring piano, rich guitar tones and textures - these were all selected by Keaton Henson to hone in on that humanity, the subtle artefacts of these kinds of recordings.

Write between the notes

The unique beauty of this library can be found in its imperfections. It is between the notes that you will feel those human moments that stop you in your tracks. The natural sounds of the players and their instruments captured during a performance.

Capturing new and alternative expressive techniques creates a great foundation for this sound library.

But Spitfire Audio have also expertly captured a selection of small, exquisitely performed moments that can be found in the studio section, including swells and “chimes” (chime-like tones). These focused elements will make compositions sound even more real, and even more human.

Heirloom features 8 string players (3 violins, 2 viola, 2 cello, 1 bass), woodwind including a Contrabass Clarinet, and Tubax, an achingly beautiful Piano (the beating heart of the library), and Guitar. All intimately recorded by the highly talented Fiona Cruickshank at London’s atmospheric Church Studios.

Past presence and future

All musicians know that recording studios are sacred spaces. The Church is quite literally so, a beautiful, old place of worship in north London, whose stone walls and stained glass have for 170 years reverberated with the sound of prayers and some of the greatest music ever made. To record at Church Studios today is to play a part in music history that has included Adele, Bob Dylan, Radiohead, Florence + the Machine and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Now Keaton Henson (Supernova, Six Lethargies, as well as 7 acclaimed solo albums) continues that lineage by acting as a medium between the decades of musicality shared there and Spitfire Audio — shaped through his own artistic lens and reverence for the beauty in imperfections.