With ample performance options and tension-building scope, Orchestral Tools take us where no sample library has gone before…

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Since 2009’s slickly rebooted, JJ Abramshelmed movie, the Star Trek franchise has enjoyed a reinvigorated decade, with successive blockbuster movies, and two uniformly cinematic TV series hoovering up viewers and plaudits. Part of TV Trek’s new appeal is its sense of larger ambition, stressed by glossy, impressive scores. Jeff Russo is the composer responsible for the orchestral magic of both Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard and in collaboration with Orchestral Tools, now offers up access to his unique palette of sounds, while simultaneously shedding light on some of the innovative methods he uses for creating effective tensions and movement.

As per Orchestral Tools’s product range, Modus’s 21 individual instruments were painstakingly captured at Berlin’s legendary Teldex Scoring Stage, as well as a range of orchestral ensembles, percussion sounds and male, female and – no lie – Klingon, choirs.

Modus’s goal however, isn’t just to present a pro-sounding toolkit of impressive orchestral flavours. The package very much wants you to adopt a similar creative mindset to Russo, with suspense-inducing tensions, dramatic transitions and atmospheric, evolving pads, or ‘Continuums’ as they’re labelled, providing users with deeper insight into a modern composer’s approach to audience manipulation.