FREAKSHOW INDUSTRIES Review
Freakshow Industries are probably the strangest plugin company out there, with their out of this world designs, perhaps even offensive, and the option to “steal” thier plugins instead of purchasing them. I can’t speak to the ethics or legality of this using their “steal” option, is it literally theft? it does say explicitly say that you are stealing the plugin, I doubt it’s legally enforceable, but what about the underlying ethics of actually giving customers the option for theft. Personally, given the dire, occult, and esoteric designs of these plugins, I prefer to allow it to weigh on me like a looming burden, for the emotional torment and despair enhances their perceived warmth and color.
Currently they have four plugins in their collection, all simple effects with interfaces that don’t always describe what they do. Being as these are all fairly simple plugins, I’ll be reviewing them all here together. They are also teasing another plugin, I’ll likely cover it as soon as it comes out, but will add it to this list as well. While the main UI are often devoid of information, each plugin includes an optional informative view to help understand what is happening, though even here there are easter eggs and well, sometimes less than useful information. For example, one control is simply labeled “Aether” and the description is a short story, with the technical information being “generate’s hellscapes”.
BACKMASK: The simplest of the bunch, backmask is a periodic reversing effect, it has a few different modes controlling how often reversing occurs, the size of the reversed window, and wether or not it is tempo synced. There is a “display” to the left of the UI which showcases one different video feeds depending which mode you are in, other controls will glitch and alter this feed, with the occasional “I want to believe” UFO poster from X-Files popping in for good measure.
DUMPSTER FIRE: Probably my favorite of the bunch, Dumpster Fire is a spectral pitch shifter and chaos effect. It also has one of my favorite UIs being black and white with different chaos sigils and weird creatures in the background for the controls. The largest center control, aptly named “Tooth” as it has a grimacing set of teeth controls the pitch shifting. “Cage” controls the number of bands used for the spectral processing, and Aether along with it’s related controls effect the chaos, or “generate hellscapes”. Dumspter Fire is a spectral plugin, so it has that sorta, resonant washy tone a lot of spectral plugins have, this is what I use it for mostly, to smear audio and introduce that effervescent chaos. Whenever I’m doing sound design for glitchy sci-fi type stuff, I give this a go to see how it works out.
MISHBY: An acronym for “maybe I shouldn’t have built you”, MISHBY is a hybrid glitching spectral distortion monstrosity. The UI is some weird guitar pedal connected to a box with a mood control and a mini diorama, the pedal has a tentacle and a weird screen with a face that has some of the neatest animations for a control. I tend to avoid the modulation and distortion on this one, I have plenty of stuff that does this already, but activating the “maybe” switch introduces some fun auto glitching, and the slider next to the face is a nice frequency shifting, also there’s some pleasing sample rate reduction from the “OCD” control.
POCKET DIMENSION: Pocket Dimension is a granular chaos pad style device, The UI is mostly an XY display that strobes through hundreds of weird and often gross AI generated images. Potentially a hazard for anyone with epilepsy, do be warned before opening this one. When you click the screen, it activates the effect and freezes on the frame so you can witness whichever AI abomination you landed on. The images do not affect the sound in any way, they are strictly cosmetic. Pocket dimension is a granular time stretcher, so clicking the display also freezes the audio buffer and stretches it out depending on the control settings. Three of the controls have inputs for the modulation, which is done via a magic sigil and U.F.O based modulation system. When connecting to either the X or Y input, the control locks and centers its self, it’s value will now be determined by the
UFO’s coordinates on that axis. The path the UFO takes can be selected from a set of 12 sigils, and it’s speed and distance are determined by rate and depth respectively.
The key take away with Freakshow plugins is to have fun, these aren’t meant to be taken seriously, well, not as plugins at least, perhaps we should take them seriously as omens. Each one creates a fun imaginative environment to play in and in my opinion are best used for resampling. Load them up, go to town, record everything and play with your new heinous audio. They are also just fun as works of art, the story telling is reminiscent of Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” mixed with a bit of Lovecraftian vibes. The variety of over the top skeuomorphic designs, mixed with glitch art and witchcraft are a blast to explore, with all sorts of easter eggs and hidden gems. As well the graphic design combining great framing, fonts, layout and color schemes somehow manage to maintain a consistant visual language for how chaotic everything is.
You can find FREAKSHOW INDUSTRIES plugins on their website: https://freakshowindustries.com/