Slate and Ash RUINS [KONTAKT]

RUINS is a sonic excavation that transforms the electric guitar into a study of collapse, texture, and spatial memory. Featuring exclusive performances from six luminaries of the experimental guitar scene, it dissolves the guitar into unstable currents of raw signal and shimmering harmony.

GUITAR MONOLITHS

Recorded and curated by producer Randall Dunn at Circular Ruin Studios, RUINS deconstructs guitar textures into raw sonic material.

Built from the exclusive recordings of six experimental guitarists – Stephen O’Malley, Oren Ambarchi, David Torn, Bill Horist, Ben Greenberg, and Arjan Miranda – the instrument’s engine disintegrates the source material via tape-loop-inspired playback, textural layering, and transformative effects processing.

SPACE, PERFORMANCE, SATURATION

The RUINS sessions were a series of controlled experiments, designed to explore the relationship between space, performance, and saturation.

To provide deep tonal versatility, RUINS offers multiple mic perspectives, including a pristinely captured DI, an array of tube powered amplifiers, an eroded stereo spring reverb, and a cavernous re-amped signal recorded in Berlin’s iconic Funkhaus sound chamber. The built-in convolution engine expands this palette further, complete with a curated library of custom impulse responses leaning toward experimental sound design.

VOICES OF EXPLORATION

Each of RUINS’ six experimental guitarists was chosen for their ability to push the guitar outside traditional musical roles – treating it less as an instrument and more as an interface for texture, gesture, and sonic ritual.

Each artist was given freehand to submit fragments: loops, textures, resonances, and mechanical failures. Their work is unified by a focus on texture, feedback, and raw materiality, forming the basis of an instrument designed to create new timbral languages that explore the outer edges of guitar performance.

STEPHEN O’MALLEY

Founding member of Sunn O))), Stephen O’Malley is known for carving monumental drone-metal sound from minimal gesture. His contributions to RUINS are gravitational: sustained low-end tones that buckle under their own weight and harmonics that emerge like tectonic shifts. His recordings feel less like performances and more like monolithic structures being slowly eroded by time.[/spoiler]

OREN AMBARCHI

Oren Ambarchi’s minimalist guitar work explores the edges of silence, amplification, and form. His contributions to RUINS are studies in restraint – gestures stretched into expansive soundscapes, oscillating between presence and absence.[/spoiler]

DAVID TORN

A pioneer of textural guitar, David Torn’s work spans ECM releases, film scores, and collaborations with the likes of David Bowie and Tim Berne. In RUINS, Torn’s signature looping and feedback chaos is rendered into skeletal fragments that twitch and echo, oscillating between improvisation and entropy.[/spoiler]

BILL HORIST

With a practice rooted in extended techniques and real-time preparation, Bill Horist transforms the guitar into a kinetic sculpture. His sessions for RUINS are rich in percussive resonance: strings bowed, struck, scraped, and detuned, yielding unstable rhythmic patterns and chaotic overtones.[/spoiler]

BEN GREENBERG / ARJAN MIRANDA

Co-founders of Circular Ruin Studio, Ben Greenberg and Arjan Miranda bring a background in noise, folk resonance, and modular experimentation. Their sessions fuse brutal distortion with melodic collapse – pulses of repetition that flicker between composition and circuitry.[/spoiler]

GUITAR AS RAW MATTER

For immediate exploration, RUINS includes over 250 thoughtfully designed presets, spanning from subterranean soundfields and digital smears, to collaged rattles and tangled harmonics.

Each serves as a creative foundation that showcases the instrument’s sound design potential. The multi-sample engine layers guitar phrases into rich, shifting harmonies, while asynchronous looping adds instability and life. The single-sample engine reimagines details – like string scratches or amp hum – into new rhythmic or tonal elements. All raw material is also provided as high-quality WAVs for use in any sampler or DAW.

MORE THAN JUST SAMPLE PLAYBACK

[spoiler]COLLAGE

Inspired by the tape-splicing techniques of musique concrète, the RUINS engine treats source material as a collection of excavated fragments. Up to five loops can be created per layer, acting as distinct sonic artefacts that can be rearranged into new sequences. Each fragment has its own unique parameters for pitch, envelopes, filtering, and playback, allowing the engine to function as a powerful, time-based sequencer for creating unstable, evolving patterns. In the multisample engine, unique loop points can be defined per multisample, creating harmonic arrays across the keyboard.

SPATIAL

The spatial page enables the construction of the sound environment. An XY pad blends the four core mic perspectives, each contributing a unique material character. Movement between perspectives can be recorded or modulated to create dynamic, shifting soundfields. This is followed by a chain of four convolution reverbs, loaded with an extensive library of IRs, including the sonic signatures of derelict spaces and resonant objects. The entire library of articulations is also available in the instrument category. This allows any sound to be used as a custom imprint, melding its textural DNA onto any performance.

EFFECTS

A chain of six DSP effects provides the final stage of shaping. A sound’s frequency can be sculpted with a multi-mode filter, or degraded with the analogue character of the tape and amp modules. A versatile modulation unit features scale-quantised modal processing, while a tape-style delay and reverb provide further spatial depth.

MODULATION

Movement is central to the engine’s philosophy. Three core sources – an advanced LFO, a drawable step sequencer for custom patterns, and MIDI CC for gestural control – can be assigned to almost any continuous parameter. This allows for everything from cyclical, rhythmic structures to the interdependent motion of a system that feels constantly on the verge of collapse.

LAYERS

The engine features a dual-layer architecture, allowing two independent sound sources to be layered and processed simultaneously. Each layer contains its own distinct set of loops and modulation assignments. This enables the creation of complex formations, where a foundational harmonic layer can be fused with a shifting textural strata, for example.[/spoiler]

ARCHITECT OF EROSION

With 30 years of experience working with guitar, Randall Dunn is known for his ability to cohere complex or heavy material for artists such as Sunn O))), Earth, and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson.

His work is marked by a performance-focused approach, aiming to capture an artist’s core sound without blunting its emotional impact. As the producer, curator and engineer for RUINS, Randall was responsible for capturing the raw interplay of space, performance, and saturation that defines the instrument’s sonic character.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

[spoiler]- 258 × PHRASE ARTICULATIONS

+ 48 Ben Greenberg/Arjan Miranda
+ 57 Bill Horist
+ 47 David Torn
+ 68 Oren Ambarchi
+ 38 Stephen O’Malley– 96 × MULTISAMPLE ARTICULATIONS+ 28 Ben Greenberg/Arjan Miranda
+ 25 Bill Horist
+ 10 David Torn
+ 21 Oren Ambarchi
+ 12 Stephen O’Malley– 281 × SOUND DESIGN PRESETS+ 23 animations
+ 26 atmospheres
+ 17 collages
+ 7 forms
+ 9 loops
+ 31 movements
+ 59 pads
+ 10 ruins
+ 46 textures
+ 53 tones– 4,636 × RAW .WAV FILES

+ 1,159 sounds
+ 4 mic perspectives[/spoiler]

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